Penguins may make playoffs, but team’s a mess. Bruce Arthur,
Sidney Crosby is 27 and headed for the backside of his NHL career, and he has won just one Stanley Cup in Pittsburgh
On Tuesday night in Ottawa, Sidney Crosby was a terror. He scored in 10 seconds flat, a slap shot that he measured for just a fraction of second, nice and easy, precise. Pittsburgh’s second goal came after he unleashed a spur-ofthe-moment backhand from 40 feet away that ate up Andrew Hammond and skipped up into the air and got batted in when it landed inches from the goal line. Pittsburgh was up 3-0 after one period. They needed that.
The Penguins lost 4-3 in overtime. It was the fourth time they had blown a 2-0 lead in their previous eight games. They still control their destiny, but they aren’t in the playoffs yet, and it’s not Crosby’s fault, clearly. But as 96-point teams go, it’s a mess.
“I think we’ve been a fragile group for the last couple of weeks,” veteran defenceman Rob Scuderi told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review’s Josh Yohe.
Lots of teams wobble. Lots of teams shake. The Penguins have been hit by injuries, and that hurts, and they probably make the playoffs because they play the wobbling Islanders and Buffalo to end the season.
But whether they do or not may not be the issue. The Penguins may get into the playoffs, and the Senators could pass the Islanders instead, or the Bruins, or the Red Wings. Pittsburgh, though, is always different, because only Pittsburgh has two generational players on the back half of their primes, and are therefore a ticking clock.
And for the last five years, every season has ended in the same way: Crosby sitting in his locker, drained, suppressing anger as best he can. People who knew Crosby used to say that he knew he could never catch Gretzky when it came to pure production, or even relative production: his best chance at legacy was Stanley Cups.
And that’s hard, because that’s the goal over which Crosby has the least control. He’s been blessed by Evgeni Malkin, but he has also played on teams that were muffled by Jaroslav Halak, and teams that have come apart at the seams once they got punched in the mouth by Philadelphia or Boston, and a team that blew a 3-1 lead to the Rangers last season while Brian Gibbons skated on his wing. A decade in and he has one Cup, all told.
And this season, by Crosby’s standards, he has dropped a little.
He is scoring the fewest points per game of his career while still tied for the league lead in scoring, though he is also playing fewer minutes. He has produced 2.4 points per 60 minutes of 5-on-5 play versus 2.6 last year; he’s actually eighth in the league in that category this season, versus 12th last year, with the thirdbest possession numbers of anybody in the top 20. He has the best possession numbers of any Penguin except for Chris Kunitz, who plays with him. This would only be the third time in his career that he has led the league in scoring.
Yes, his goal-scoring rate has dropped; some people who have observed him closely say Crosby doesn’t hit his top gear as often anymore. Two years ago he played against Boston while recovering from a broken jaw, and looked skittish after Zdeno Chara punched him in the face. Last year, playing with what was later revealed to be a wrist that could have required surgery, he had difficulty controlling the puck against the Rangers, and scored once in 13 playoff games.
But there are always bigger problems, and every year that’s lost matters. Generational players are treasures, and Crosby has fit in with the line of Howe, Lafleur, Orr, Gretzky and Lemieux. There’s a responsibility when you win the rarest lotteries, and whoever gets Connor McDavid is going to bear it, too. In basketball you can get LeBron James and still fail to win, even with his ability to affect every play. In hockey Sidney Crosby only plays 20 minutes a game, and even with Malkin and Kris Letang and Kunitz hanging around, it’s not enough.
The Penguins, meanwhile, are in salary-cap hell, and the Oilers have their first-round pick, and time’s a-wastin’. Crosby is 27, and that tends to be when players start to decline, even stars. Wayne Gretzky led the league in points per game nine times if you include the season he turned 27, and twice after. With Mario Lemieux, the numbers were five and three. Neither won a Cup after 27, although in Gretzky’s case, a trade had something to do with that.
And faced with decisions at this stage of Crosby’s career, the Penguins cleaned house last season and replaced them with Jim Rutherford and a rookie coach who has seemed overmatched at times. Now, the best solution is probably to chase Mike Babcock in the summer, since he would be crazy not to be interested. (When asked about Jonathan Toews after the gold-medal final in Sochi, Babcock deliberately changed the topic to his captain, saying, “Sidney Crosby, for me, was so dominant the last two games.”) Maybe Babcock, lured by Ron Burkle’s impatience and money, says yes.
Otherwise, you either either try to rebuild in mid-stride, or stand pat and hope. Hockey’s a funny game; the Penguins could catch fire in a week, and rekindle something. But this feels like a franchise whose window is very nearly closed.