Sidney Crosby on the most important loss of his career.

Often times when members of the media are granted an opportunity to interview star level players in the National Hockey League, we tend to focus on the positives. Players are more often available after a big win than a big loss, and conversations tend to flow more naturally when touching on more positive subjects.

This is especially true when it comes to superstar players like Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby, who throughout his career in the NHL has always been somewhat wary of opening up too much. That's why when recently, Crosby sat down with NHL insider Elliotte Friedman and his co-host Jeff Marek, it was very interesting to hear the normally reserved Crosby open up about some of the more difficult moments in his career.

The topic being discussed was Colorado Avalanche star forward Nathan MacKinnon, a close personal friend of Crosby's, when the subject of the Avalanche's failures prior to winning the Stanley Cup this season came up. After discussing the topic a little, Crosby was asked about the losses that shaped his career and he revealed that there was one loss in particular that played a pivotal role in his own career.

"If I think about losing.... I think 2008 is the best lesson, for us, for me personally," admitted Crosby on the 32 Thoughts podcast.

Crosby would go into more detail about why that loss was so important. Of course the fact that it would come in the Stanley Cup Final played a big role, but according to Crosby it was the quality of the opposition on the other side that truly made the lesson hit home.

"Couldn't of had a better lesson and a better team to learn from," said Crosby. "As far as if you're gonna have a tough lesson, that's a pretty darn good team to get a lesson from that Detroit team.

"You don't want to ever lose but if you do you gotta take something from it. I think we probably took the most, and personally I took the most from that '08 loss to Detroit."

It's not hard to see where Crosby is coming from when you think about the team that the Red Wings had that season. The likes of Henrik Zetterberg, Niklas Kronwall, Dominik Hasek, Pavel Datsyuk and Chris Chelios were all still a part of the Red Wings roster at the time, and you would be hard pressed to ask for a better group of NHL players to learn from.