Sidney Crosby spoke to the media in Las Vegas during the NHL’s annual preseason, and hoo boy, the result wasn’t very settling for Penguins’ fans.
Crosby’s frustrations with the lack of competitiveness by the Penguins, and speculation on his future will kick into high gear after this
one.
Matt Larkin of Daily Faceoff asked Crosby during the Player Media Tour availability Monday night about his future with the Penguins in the context of the losing seasons the past few years and how difficult it is to deal with the speculation because of it.
“I mean, I understand it,” Crosby said. “It’s not something you want to discuss. You’d rather be talking about who we’re getting at the (trade) deadline or, you know, where we’re at as far as, are we one or two or three in the division?. But you know, it’s one of those things. That’s the hard part about losing. I think everybody thinks that the buzzer goes and you lose a game and that sucks, but there’s so much more than that. It’s the (roster) turnover. It’s the unknown, the uncertainty, the question marks — that’s the stuff that’s tough. It makes you appreciate all those years that we were competing and going after the big acquisition every single trade deadline. I don’t think I took it for granted, but I definitely appreciate it that much more now.
“But it doesn’t change my approach. I still go out there trying to win every single game and try to be the best that I can be. I think that youth and having that energy around you isn’t a bad thing, either. We’ve got a lot of hungry guys, a lot of competition for spots. So I think you just try to find different things you can feed off of and still continue to learn through it.”
As usual, Crosby cleans it up at the end with some cliches and general empty words that he’s a master of, but the answer in the middle about what has made the last few years so tough stands out as perhaps the most public display of a cutting critique of his professional frustration. There was also no clear declaration that he was committed to stay in Pittsburgh, either, or clarification to cut off the speculation, you might have noticed.
Crosby’s agent Pat Brisson, on the other hand, took to voice the frustrations to a whole new level.
“Well, it’s a reality,” his longtime agent, Pat Brisson of CAA Sports, told The Athletic on Monday night regarding the buzz generated by Pittsburgh’s lack of success. “First of all, he’s been so consistent for 20 years. He had another great year last season. He just keeps going. The comparison is Tom Brady. We want Sidney to hopefully be in the playoffs every year. We want him to hopefully win another Cup or two. So each year the team that he’s playing for fails to make the playoffs, it creates a lot of speculation. In reality, he’s not getting any younger. We’re here to support him. It’s the beginning of the season here. Let’s see how things are going. Hopefully they have a great season and the speculation will go away.”
“But at the same time, the reason we all talk about this is because he’s such a great player still,” added Brisson, who was hanging out with Crosby during his Player Media Tour stop Monday. “He continues to be such a difference maker. Like a Tom Brady, that’s how I look at it.”
And well, Tom Brady did leave the New England Patriots to go win a Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
So again, I asked Brisson, is it possible Crosby will entertain a trade out of Pittsburgh one day?
“I mean, I’m answering something that … let’s put it this way, it’s always a possibility, you know?” Brisson said. “It’s been three years they haven’t made the playoffs. It all depends on how Sid is going to be and how the team is going to do. I maintain the same position that I do believe that he should be playing playoff hockey every year. In my opinion.”
Oh yes, a Tom Brady comparison. You know, the guy who left his franchise after 20 years to finish things out in a better on-the-field-spot somewhere else. Followed up by directly saying that a trade is “always a possibility”.
Not very settling indeed.
On one hand, the task at hand and focus for Crosby remains on getting the Penguins back up a level. As LeBrun also wrote and emphasized, “Crosby for sure only sees himself as a Penguin for life”. But all the losing the Penguins have been doing is raising obvious questions about what will happen in the few remaining years that Crosby has left as a player. Neither Crosby nor his agent closed the door or outwardly dismissed the possibility of him playing for a team other than the Penguins one day.
On the other hand, Crosby hasn’t been in the playoffs in the last three seasons, and that’s not because he hasn’t held up his end of the deal. Crosby has done his part, it’s been others around the organization on and off the ice that are responsible for the team’s decline. Anyone that fiercely competitive isn’t going to be happy about such a situation, and the job of Crosby’s agent is to advocate for him, so it’s not out of line or abnormal to hear those comments, jarring as they may be.
Whether this is a shot across the bow toward the Pens to focus on short-term improvement, or preseason chatter that won’t mean much remains to be seen. But the story about the possibilities on Crosby’s future won’t being going away any time soon, especially if the Penguins don’t have a good start to the season on the ice. Crosby and his agent might not want to discuss the speculation out there around him, but they also didn’t do anything to quell it when they had the chance. In fact, the opposite happened to stoke even more of that speculation.
