FILE - Pittsburgh Penguins' Sidney Crosby (87) and Kris Letang (58) play in an NHL hockey game against the Vancouver Canucks in Pittsburgh, Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2021. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)
CRANBERRY TOWNSHIP, Pa. (AP) – The standings made it look like the Pittsburgh Penguins were close to making the playoffs last spring.
How things look is one thing. How things feel is another. The distinction is not lost on Sidney Crosby.
“Close doesn’t get you anywhere,” Pittsburgh’s longtime captain said Wednesday shortly after beginning his 20th NHL training camp.
Whether you miss the postseason by a lot or by a little – the Penguins did the latter by finishing three points out of the Eastern Conference’s wild-card spot – you still miss. And for a player and a franchise whose expectations remain far higher than competing for a playoff spot, there’s little solace to be found in almost doing something that used to be taken for granted.
Still, Crosby pointed to the way the Penguins pushed during an 8-2-2 stretch run that kept them in the mix until the season’s final days as proof there is plenty of fight left in a star-laden if aging group.
The three-time Stanley Cup winner and two-time MVP saw enough to sign a two-year contract extension on Monday that runs through the summer of 2027 and expires a little over a month before his 40th birthday.
The future Hall of Famer is hopeful it won’t take that long for Penguins general manager Kyle Dubas to retool around the team’s venerable core of Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang. He saw signs of it over the final month of last season when newcomers like forward Michael Bunting – acquired in a trade with Carolina that sent Jake Guentzel to the Hurricanes – helped provide an energy the team lacked at critical moments before his arrival.
“I think there’s a little momentum to build off of there,” Crosby said. “I think if you look at the year before, our game was probably trending the other way. I thought last year it was going in the right direction. We just ran out of time.”
Dubas opted against taking a big swing in the offseason like in the summer of 2023 when he brought three-time Norris Trophy defenseman Erik Karlsson over from San Jose. The moves this time around were focused on trying to thread a very fine needle of trying to help Pittsburgh’s future while still protecting the present.
Veteran forward Kevin Hayes joined after an underwhelming season in St. Louis, along with a 2025 second-round draft pick, a not inconsequential development for one of the league’s oldest teams. Defenseman Sebastian Aho signed a two-year deal as the Penguins attempt to fortify the blue line behind Letang, Karlsson and Marcus Pettersson.
The team fired assistant Todd Reirden, who oversaw a 30th-ranked power play that was an anchor that sank its season.
Yet the core largely remains intact. Crosby is coming off one of the best seasons ever by a player over 35. The 37-year-old led the team in goals (42), assists (54) and points (94) by a wide margin while becoming just the second player in league history to average a point a game 19 times.
Malkin and Letang remain dynamic, though consistency is an issue. They are hardly alone. The last two years have been a series of ebbs and flows where the Penguins can look like the team that won three Stanley Cups and went to four finals between 2008-17 one night and look like a disjointed mess the next.
Goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic, whose stirring play over the second half of the season helped key that late push, remembers a team meeting during the middle of last season where the Penguins seemed baffled about how hot and cold they were running.
“We’d play playoff hockey, we’d play winning hockey and then the next night, two days later, we’d look like a completely different team, turning pucks over, not skating, the attention to detail isn’t there,” he said. “It wasn’t conducive to winning.”
Or at least winning consistently enough to have the Penguins play into late April and beyond.
Navigating the end of a dynasty while trying to put the pieces in place to build another is an incredibly fraught and in some cases futile exercise. The Chicago Blackhawks and Los Angeles Kings that traded the Cup in the early 2010s eventually fell off.
Dubas was brought in to help Pittsburgh avoid the same pitfalls. Despite a rocky first season running a club where winning isn’t considered an expectation but a requirement, Crosby heard enough over the summer to stay committed to the only team he’s ever known.
While part of Crosby’s decision was based on loyalty and comfort to be sure, he also remains intent on keeping the Penguins relevant. His decision to sign a deal that will continue to pay him $8.7 million a season, well under market value for the most accomplished active player in the league, only reiterated a commitment that has never wavered nearly two decades in.
“I just think it’s an incredible gesture on his part for our organization and our team,” coach Mike Sullivan said. “I think it sends a huge message to all of us that he has an incredible appetite to win.”
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