The cheek, to even attempt a deflection from there. It's hard enough to tip in a puck right from the goalie's doorstep. That sucker is small, hard, and moving well above the speed limit, and it's a genuine feat of hand-eye coordination to not just get a blade on it, but to get only just so much blade on it to not halt it but redirect it to the angle of your choosing. This is probably the hardest hockey thing that the best make look easy. Joe Pavelski dined out on it. Chris Kreider made a career of it. But right up there with them is Sidney Crosby, giving himself what could only be described as a heat check on Thursday night, attempting a redirect from 20 damn feet away. At least.
Crosby's flawless redirect off a nice pass from Ryan Shea, his 27th goal of the season, capped off three Penguins goals in 37 seconds, and though that would prove enough, the Penguins poured it on against old mate Tristan Jarry, winning 6-2 in Edmonton, and moving clear of the Islanders for second in the Metro.
Go ahead, you can admit it: You wrote the Penguins off before the season started. I know I did. They didn't appear to improve the roster, which is old and only getting older, and there was not much to write home about in the talent pipeline. They hadn't made the playoffs since 2022, and this looked to be yet another year that would mostly serve as an active seniors program. Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, and Erik Karlsson are still the big names around here, and while that's a core that could compete for a Cup in 2016, 2026 was supposed to be a different story.
But they're winning! They're no world-beaters, but they're top 10 in both goals for and against. Their lines are rife with Flibbets and Donks. But their best player by a mile is 38-year-old Sidney Crosby. Through 50 games, he leads the Pens in both goals and assists; his 57 points is 19 clear of everyone else on the roster. He's second among their forwards in ice time, still skating a healthy 19:38 a night. He's fourth in the league in goals scored, and on pace for 44.
It is, genuinely, amazing for the NHL's seventh-oldest player (and oldest center) to be playing like this. I want to say he's turning back the clock, but it never ticked forward; this man just refuses to score fewer than 30 goals or 90 points. He's making a fool of me, frankly. Every year I write something like, "Appreciate Crosby now while you still can, he can't keep doing this forever," and then he does.
If there is a red flag, it's that Crosby's shot volume is down notably, but he's making up for it with shooting percentage. That's not entirely sustainable, but it's also the work of a crafty veteran maximizing his chances when he gets them—like Thursday's deflection. As players age, the wheels go first, then the ability to shake off those bumps and bruises, but things like vision and positioning remain. Crosby is the "smartest" athlete I've ever seen play hockey. He may not have the borderline-superhuman athletic skills of Connor McDavid—held pointless by Pittsburgh last night—but Crosby is truly Gretzky's heir in his ability to see where the puck is going, and put himself in the right places to make things happen.
It's a graceful career arc for the Cole Harbour wunderkind who entered the league with a suffocating amount of hype and pressure, and somehow lived up to and past it. It's entirely unrealistic-seeming to anyone who remembers the prime years he lost to concussions, and the fear that we'd never get the genuine article back. And it's got to be pure satisfaction for the player who everyone thought was too old to be the best player on a contender.
Age hits in different ways. Letang and Karlsson are still eating minutes and getting their points, but they're not game-changers anymore. Evgeni Malkin is having a nice bounce-back year, even as he battles injuries. After last night's game, in which he scored a vintage goal of his own, an emotional Malkin revealed his personal goal this season, and it's a strikingly humbling one: play well enough not to be forced to hang up his skates, as all players eventually must. "I try to do my best because I knew I wanted to play one more year," Malkin said. "I want to show I’m still a good player. I want everybody to see that I can play next year."
The real testament to Sidney Crosby's greatness is, I think, that no one's talking about him in those terms. He's not "doing well for an old guy." He's just a star, playing like one, in his 21st season.
