Sidney Crosby Is Turning Back the Clock. Unfortunately, the Pittsburgh Penguins Are Not.

At 36, Crosby is having one of the best seasons ever by a forward his age — but he can only drag the Pittsburgh Penguins so far.

For those seeking a microcosm of the 2023-24 Pittsburgh Penguins’ season, it’s hard to do better (or worse) than the team’s past five games. Over that span, 36-year-old future Hall of Fame center Sidney Crosby produced five goals and seven points, playing like he hadn’t lost a step from the Crosby of 10 years ago or more. And yet, the Penguins dropped four of those five contests — including a loss to Vancouver when Crosby put the team on his back, scoring in the second period to draw the Pens within one and tipping home a game-tying goal with 28.2 seconds left in the third, only to see Pittsburgh fall later in overtime.

Even when living legends turn back the clock, they can only do so much.

Individually speaking, we’re in a golden age for Crosby’s class of older, 2000s-era superstars across the sports world. Over in the NBA, 39-year-old LeBron James is having one of the best seasons ever for a player his age, and the NFL isn’t far removed from watching 40-something Tom Brady rewrite the rules around aging as a quarterback. Father Time may be undefeated, but he’s having to work a little harder than usual these days.

Crosby is adding to that with his 2023-24 campaign so far. In 44 games, Crosby has 27 goals and 48 points; his 0.61 goals-per-game average is the third-best rate of his career in a season, and his best rate since he was 23 years old in 2010-11. He’s also still playing an all-around, 200-foot game, with his Penguins having one of the league’s best shares of total shot attempts when he’s on the ice versus off.

Because of all this, Crosby is currently tracking for 21.8 adjusted Goals Above Replacement (GAR) this season, which is tied for 18th among all players in the league and is tied for 12th among forwards. If he maintains that pace, it would be Crosby’s best output in a season since he was 29 years old and leading Pittsburgh to the Stanley Cup in 2016-17, as well as the best two-way season of his career in terms of defensive value.

By this measure, Crosby’s age-36 season is better than those of Wayne Gretzky (17.3 adjusted GAR), Mark Messier (17.1), Joe Sakic (16.6), Steve Yzerman (9.8) and Mario Lemieux (only 5.5 in an injury-shortened 2001-02 campaign), to name just a few of the greats that Sid the Kid is skating circles around. Only three forwards — Teemu Selänne, Gordie Howe and, of course, Alex Ovechkin — and seven skaters overall have posted more adjusted GAR in a season at age 36 or older than Crosby is on track for in 2023-24:

By all rights, Crosby’s team should be buoyed by his historic performance. After all, the whole premise of this Penguins squad was that it was a “last dance” of sorts with Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and the core that helped Pittsburgh win three Cups going back to the late 2000s.

Instead of making moves that might mean a softer landing whenever the post-Crosby era arrived, new general manager Kyle Dubas doubled down on trying to win now with Pittsburgh’s current group when he dealt away multiple future draft picks (and tied up $10 million in cap space per year through 2026-27) for 33-year-old defenseman Erik Karlsson this past August. It’s no coincidence that Pittsburgh has the NHL’s oldest roster (age 31.2 on average) this season, more than a full year older than the No. 2 Washington Capitals (29.9). In fact, this Penguins squad is the NHL’s oldest since the 2007-08 Detroit Red Wings team (average age: 32.1) that, coincidentally enough, beat Pittsburgh and a 20-year-old Crosby for the Stanley Cup.

So getting an all-time late-30s performance from your captain and biggest star would seem to be a best-case scenario for any team built around a veteran group making one last run at a championship. But the Penguins are mired in mediocrity. They have more total losses (23) than wins (21) on the season, sit five points out of the Eastern Conference’s final wild card spot, rank just 15th in the league’s Elo power rankings and have little better than a coin-flip’s chance (51%) at making the playoffs. Pittsburgh has hovered around .500 at midseason before, only to turn things around and make a Cup run. But a lot would have to change for this Penguins squad to replicate that same feat.

We can’t really even blame the acquisition of Karlsson, who has played relatively well (16.0 adjusted GAR) this season. While that mark is down some from his Norris Trophy-winning form of 2022-23, he has still provided Pittsburgh with one of its best blueline performances of the Crosby era — and the famously non-defensive D-man hasn’t tanked their defense either. Ironically, the Penguins rank much better in preventing goals (No. 7) than in creating them (No. 21) despite Crosby’s scoring heroics, and despite adding one of the NHL’s best offensive blueliners ever. Go figure.

All of this puts Pittsburgh in a bind for the future. Their window to compete is closing rapidly, and they’re wasting what is probably one of the last truly great seasons Crosby has left in his stellar career. (Of the Top 15 on our list above aside from Crosby, they dropped from an average of 21.9 adjusted GAR that season to 14.4 the following season, and 11.1 the season after that.) There’s still time left to salvage something here, but not much — meaning we may end up looking back on this season as the one when Crosby traveled back to his prime but couldn’t take the rest of his team with him there.

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Filed under: NHL