Penguins, Sidney Crosby to discuss contract extension this summer

With the Penguins missing the playoffs for the second straight year and the team potentially heading for some sort of reset, some have wondered if they could consider parting with franchise icon Sidney Crosby. 

However, speaking with reporters Thursday including Justin Guerriero of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the captain certainly isn’t thinking like that, indicating that he expects to have talks about a contract extension this summer.

It will be the first time in quite a while that Crosby will be discussing a new deal. He’s about to enter the final year of a 12-year agreement signed back in 2012. That contract, with a term and a back-diving structure that is now illegal throughout the league, carries an $8.7M AAV, the price tag he has had every year since the 2008-09 campaign.

In some ways, not a lot has changed over those years. Crosby has produced over a point per game in each of his 19 NHL campaigns, routinely leading the Penguins in scoring. Even this season, Crosby had the third-highest goal total of his career (42) along with his highest point total (94) since the 2018-19 campaign. Suffice it to say, those are impressive numbers, especially for a 36-year-old.

Many players Crosby’s age use their performance as a barometer for when the time might be right to hang up the skates but that isn’t necessarily the case for the captain:

"I’ve always just gone year to year, and that’s always served me well as far as how I evaluate my game and that sort of thing. There’s always a lot of factors, but I think that’s separate from talking contracts and, at my age and things like that, there’ll be a lot of factors. But as far as just evaluating my game, I don’t look any differently at how much longer I can play based off that."

Crosby can’t sign his next contract until July 1 as players must be in the final year of their existing deal before becoming extension-eligible. While the Penguins certainly need to start to make their core younger, they’d be taking a big step back if they can’t reach a new deal with him. 

That said, given how smoothly talks have gone in the past, it definitely wouldn’t be surprising if an agreement wasn’t in place at some point in the summer.