Yeah yeah, Pens win 3–2. Crosby scores two, is declared Mayor of Pittsburgh. We get it.

But here’s the thing that no one is going to want to talk about today, lambs. That wasn’t Sidney Crosby who scored two goals last night. We don’t know who it was, but according to the Pens website yesterday, Sidney Crosby was holding court in a clearly clean shaven manner. We even wrote about it, and it was agreed all around in the Nation that he is incapable of growing a decent beard.

So who was this bearded wonder scoring last night? The rat was back, and in full effect. We can’t help but think it is one of the following scenarios:

1. Sidney Crosby has been replaced with an alien—or possibly robot—clone. The Aliens—or possibly robot technicians from the future—didn’t take the grooming changes Crosby made into account for their prototype.
2. Mario Lemieux went back in time and kidnapped the Sidney Crosby of three weeks ago. You remember him—scoring, smiling, gross beard-wearing. Seeing that May 27 Crosby had significantly diminished skills, Lemieux went back to a time where Sid was still filled with confidence and poise and stole his golden boy.
3. Losing the first two games in the SCF has caused Sidney Crosby to age so much, he is now capable of growing that rat beard in less than 24 hours. The series is really taking its toll on the star, who now has the body of a 40-year-old man.
4. Drinking extremely large amounts of Gatorade has caused significant cellular damage to Sid the Kid, and coupled with an ability to see through time, he is also able to grow facial hair in an extremely patchy distribution, in a short amount of time.

Whatever the case, things are getting dangerous. Sidney Crosby clones, alien technicians, time travel? We can’t WAIT for Game Four to get underway! Who knows who will show up?

We know one thing: if we lived in Pittsburgh, we’d be demanding a bone marrow sample from Crosby, and we would be sending it down to the boys in the lab to certify it’s really him.