At the juncture Pittsburgh Penguins’ captain Sidney Crosby has reached in his storied NHL career, it’s inevitable that he is going to be asked a whole lot about his future and how long he intends to keep playing the sport he loves.
After all, Father Time is undefeated, right?
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Well, that’s the case for most athletes. Sports are a young man’s game, and it’s only a matter of time before the end comes calling. Legs start to give out. Basic conditioning becomes harder and harder. Performance begins to dwindle. The pace of the game suddenly starts to feel faster than you remember, with things happening at a speed you can no longer keep up with.
Yet none of that is happening for Crosby, at least, not yet. And in an exclusive interview with The Athletic’s Josh Yohe on Thursday at the IIHF World Championship in Switzerland, he made sure to clarify on his comments from locker cleanout day earlier this month about going “year-to-year” that this season – the final season of his current two-year contract – will not be his last playing in the NHL.
“It’s pretty obvious why I would just go year-to-year with the contracts,” Crosby told Yohe. “At the end of the day, I’m just going to do what’s best for the team. It’s got nothing to do with how long I want to play. It’s not like that at all.”
He added: “I definitely want to keep playing for as many years as possible.”
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Not only is that music straight to the ears of Penguins’ fans and hockey fans everywhere, it’s also a statement that Crosby believes he has a whole lot more left in the tank.
Simply put, he isn’t built like other hockey players, like other athletes. When his legs start to give out, when the conditioning gets harder, when performance isn’t up to par, and when the pace appears to be catching up, he always finds ways to reinvent himself and maintain the separation between he and the Hockey Reaper.
Right now, Crosby – who will turn 39 this summer – has 654 goals and 1,761 points in 1,420 career NHL games. He is currently sitting at seventh all-time in NHL points, and assuming he is healthy in 2026-27, he should surpass both Marcel Dionne (sixth) at 1,771 and Ron Franis (fifth) at 1,798. And with at least a 90-point season, he will also surpass Gordie Howe (fourth) at 1,850.
Wayne Gretzky is the only player in NHL history – and the guy at the top of the list – to have hit 2,000 points.
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You do the math.
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If 2026-27 is, indeed, not Crosby’s final season playing in the NHL – which, he’s adamant it won’t be – that means with one more season above point-per-game, he’ll be at 1,844 points. And it would be his 22nd consecutive season accomplishing the feat.
In order to reach 2,000 points, Crosby would need to average 79.6 points in the next three seasons to get there. Should he remain healthy and at point-per-game or higher? He will get there sometime during that third season, which would be his age 41 season.
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And you know what? All of that sounds pretty attainable.
The fact of the matter is that the longer Crosby keeps playing, the closer he gets to that historic mark. The longer he keeps playing, he only keeps proving that he isn’t slowing down in any kind of remarkable way. He is designed for longevity, and he has delivered on that design for 21 years already.
Plus, if the Penguins really are going to try to get better this summer and in the next couple of years as suggested by GM and POHO Kyle Dubas, there’s an even better chance Crosby hits the mark. Along the way, Dubas will aim to surround Crosby with more talent and younger talent — which, along with health, is going to be the key factor in him reaching 2,000 points at the end of the day.
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If Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell continue to play with Crosby through at least next season, and, possibly, the last two years of their contracts, they’re each good for at least 20-plus goals and 60-plus points, and that’s probably on the low end of things when considering their goals-per-game and points-per-game production over the last two seasons mostly spent alongside Crosby.
And, if they don’t continue to play with Crosby, that probably means someone like Egor Chinakhov – who had 18 goals and 36 points in 43 games with the Penguins last season – would flank him, and possibly, even a new face who is younger and NHL-established.
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Either way, the point is that Crosby won’t have any shortage of talent to play with for his final years in hockey, and that should only lend more to him being able to reach the 2,000 point milestone — even when he starts to drop off. Because, let’s face it: Crosby, like everyone, is eventually going to hit a bit of a wall. His defense has already declined quite a bit, but there will come a day when the offense is what it used to be, either.
Even still, it feels not just dirty but plain incorrect to suggest that he’s all of a sudden going to see his production cut in half within the next three years. It feels like he is the type of player who is going to decline gradually rather than steeply. But in that hypothetical scenario where Crosby does fall off drastically in that second or third year?
Well, he would only need to average 59.75 points over the next four years to reach 2,000. Again, that seems attainable, even with a falloff.
So, while we sit back and enjoy what’s left of Crosby’s career, it’s likely that we’ll see him chasing a feat of all-time greatness that has only, once before, been realized. After all, he is one of the best to ever do it already — so why put a cap on greatness?
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