Eventually, Sidney Crosby will have to move on. He won’t finish his career as a member of the Pittsburgh Penguins.
It’s a bit sad to say that. But it’s reality. The vast majority of hockey greats move on toward the end of their careers: Gordie Howe, Bobby Hull, Patrick Kane, Mats Sundin, Jarome Iginla, Mike Modano, Peter Forsberg, Martin Brodeur, Duncan Keith, Raymond Bourque, Mark Messier.
At one point few would have imagined any of those players wouldn’t finish their careers with the teams that defined their greatness. But it happened. Sometimes because they wanted to move on. Sometimes because they weren’t wanted any more. And sometimes because it became clear the team they had played years for needed to benefit by trading them.
In a perfect world, Crosby would conclude his time in Pittsburgh like Steve Yzerman did in Detroit after 22 seasons. The Red Wings didn’t need to trade him and get assets in return, and the team was strong, no longer needing him to be its best player.
The Penguins, however, are at the opposite end of the spectrum. They won’t make the playoffs for a second straight year. The current squad appears to want the season to be over as soon as possible. In the last two weeks Pittsburgh has lost games by scores of 6-1, 6-0, 5-1 and 4-0. The Penguins were 25th in the NHL after Wednesday’s games, with just 28 wins in 64 games.
This 18-wheeler-over-a-cliff disaster has happened despite a strong season from the 36-year-old Crosby, perhaps the most consistently competitive player of his generation. That said, even No. 87 has fallen off badly of late, going 12 games without a goal.
The organization and ownership apparently are in a state of denial. The local media, too. Nobody can believe this is really over.
Ownership decided last summer that, instead of beginning the process of adding fresh new talent, the best plan was to bring in a general manager from a winning team with a poor playoff record (Kyle Dubas) and an aging Norris Trophy-winning defenceman (Erik Karlsson) from an NHL doormat that was desperate to off-load as much of his huge contract as possible.
The result has been an unmitigated disaster and, a year later, the Penguin are still without elite young players or top prospects. Mario Lemieux rescued the franchise when he arrived in 1984 and Crosby did the same 21 years later. But there is no next saviour in the Pittsburgh organization, and there won’t be one coming this summer in the draft.
The Penguins dumped Jake Guentzel at the trade deadline just months after trading futures to San Jose for Karlsson, which tells you how disconnected this entire process has become. What direction is this team going in?
Chicago and Montreal are just starting to realize how long and difficult the path is going to be to just get back to the playoffs. Pittsburgh doesn’t want to believe it will soon be in the same position. But it will.
Crosby, who could play another five to seven years, may sign a contract extension with the team this summer, we are told. As if that ends the discussion. Such loyalty is to be commended although, to be clear, this is a business arrangement between a club and an athlete and loyalty really doesn’t have anything to do with it.
But unless something extraordinary happens, Crosby will be signing up to play many years for a losing team. Does that make sense to anybody that he would want to do that?
Pittsburgh, meanwhile, has a massively valuable asset in Crosby that can only depreciate. Teams would pay a substantial ransom today to bring him and his winning approach to their organization. Given the deep hole from which the Penguins are starting this rebuild, why wouldn’t they want to do all they could to shorten the duration the team will be out of contention?
Boston didn’t have to go through that kind of rebuild, you might argue. After the team missed the playoffs in 2015 and 2016, there were decisions to be made. Zdeno Chara was 38. Patrice Bergeron was 30. Instead of taking a step back, the Bruins quickly got back to winning.
But that was because they already owned stars Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak. Pittsburgh has no such younger players moving into their prime. They have 37-year-old Evgeni Malkin, 36-year-old Kris Letang, 39-year-old Jeff Carter and the 33-year-old Karlsson. Now the 29-year-old Guentzel is gone, and the team hasn’t had a top 10 draft pick in a dozen years.
The Penguins don’t have to blow it up. It’s already blown up on them. They just don’t want to admit it.
Neither did Detroit when Ken Holland was still general manager. The Wings, after putting off their rebuild, are now in danger of missing the playoffs for an eighth straight season.
In another season or two, Crosby will realize even more than he already does that losing is no fun at all. He’ll become desperate to compete at the highest level, which for the NHL, is the Stanley Cup playoffs. The annual chatter of will he be traded or won’t he will become tiresome.
The Penguins will also come to hate losing after so much success. Dubas won’t be able to speed up the process without an injection of assets, picks and prospects. Pittsburgh will ultimately come to view the trading of Crosby to a contender as a way to possibly shave a year or two off the painful rebuilding process.
Crosby and the Penguins has been a beautiful, incredibly successful partnership. It will have to come to an end for the sake of both parties.
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