No place like home: Crosby signs contract extension

By Brett Czarniak

Let’s be honest, are we surprised? No. Would he really have gone elsewhere? Of course not. But, for as long as it took, you can’t blame us for holding our breath just a little while scrolling through sacrilegious photoshopped pictures of our glorious captain wearing an Avalanche jersey. Do not fear, Pittsburgh, Avalanche-jersey-Sidney can’t hurt you; the kid has put the pen to paper again.

On Sept. 16, per the Pittsburgh Penguins, the team extended Crosby with a two-year, $17.4 million contract that runs through the 2026-27 season. The contract comes complete with a no-trade clause (I know, better safe than sorry, but really Dubas?) and guarantees a salary of $780,000 for the upcoming season. The bulk of the money, $16.31 million to be exact, comes in the form of signing bonuses that will arrive at the beginning of next season.

Now if you do the math on this, you’ll find the average annual value is, as it has been for the past 12 years, $8.7 million for number 87. And while to the rest of us peasants $8.7 million per year would be quite alright, make no mistake in that, with regard to the current NHL player market, he’s taking a big pay cut. Both Filip Forsberg of the Predators and Sam Reinhart of the Panthers, who each tied Sidney Crosby for 94 points last season, are set to earn $10 million and $11 million respectively. William Nylander, who finished only four points ahead of Crosby, is due for $13.5 million in 2025. Considering the center’s continued success, saying the Penguins scored a discount is an understatement.

Crosby is entering his 19th year with the Pittsburgh Penguins. Courtesy of southcentral via Wikimedia Commons.

So why take marginally less and a chance on a team that has missed the playoffs for the past two years? Well, to anyone who has been a Penguins fan for long enough, you know it’s simply a capitulation of his character. It speaks to his trust in the team’s competitive potential. His willingness to give general manager Kyle Dubas more financial flexibility to build a better team around him speaks to his (albeit $8.7 million dollar) selflessness. What a truly beautiful specimen our Sidney Crosby is.

However, there are no guarantees in this cruel world. As much as we’d like to optimistically assume Crosby has just cemented his lifetime Penguins legacy, there are questions. Will he still play at 40 years old? If so, will Malkin and Letang stick around to complete the core, and would that change his willingness to play here? For hockey standards, he’s old going on older. If the Penguins continue to be uncharacteristically uncompetitive, who could really blame him for wanting to spend his last years in a place where he could win a championship? At the end of the day, the NHL is a business, and Crosby would be well within his right to make a change.

Nevertheless, in the now, commitments speak louder than contracts. It’s fair to say Crosby knows he’s the face of a franchise and the leader of the group. For most of us, this contract feels like a mere formality, solidifying what he has already made clear to the city this past decade: Pittsburgh comes first.