Crosby Heading to Playoffs

Sidney Crosby is going back to the Stanley Cup Playoffs at age 38, and Pittsburgh got there by beating the New Jersey Devils 5-2 on Thursday, April 9, to end a three-season postseason drought. The Penguins said the clinch is their first playoff berth since the 2021-22 season. (nhl.com) That drought matters because Crosby has spent almost his entire adult life treating spring hockey like part of the calendar. Pittsburgh drafted him first overall in 2005, and National Hockey League records on his player page list three Stanley Cups with the Penguins in 2009, 2016, and 2017. (nhl.com 1) (nhl.com 2) He is not hanging on as a ceremonial captain either. Crosby’s official National Hockey League stat line shows 29 goals and 43 assists for 72 points in 66 games this season, which is still top-line production deep into his 21st year in the league. (nhl.com) Pittsburgh did not sneak in with one hot week. The team said it ranks in the National Hockey League’s top 10 in wins with 41, points with 98, goals with 282, power play at 24.6 percent, penalty kill at 81.8 percent, and goal differential at plus-33. (nhl.com) The older core is still driving the story. In the clinching win over New Jersey, Crosby had two assists, Evgeni Malkin scored and finished with two points, and Kris Letang added an assist, which is about as close as hockey gets to the same band getting back on stage. (apnews.com) (nhl.com) That is why this playoff return feels different from a nostalgia lap. Crosby, Malkin, and Letang were the faces of Pittsburgh’s last championship era, and now they are the faces of the team that dragged the club out of a three-year gap and back into a bracket that had gone on without them. (nhl.com) (apnews.com) Crosby’s career page also shows 1,759 points across the regular season and playoffs combined, and it notes that he passed Mario Lemieux’s 1,895 combined points mark for Pittsburgh earlier this season. For one franchise, that is like watching one statue walk past another. (nhl.com) So the headline is not just that Pittsburgh qualified. It is that a player born in 1987, drafted in 2005, and already carrying three Cup rings is still central enough in 2026 that when the Penguins get back in, the story still starts with Sidney Crosby. (nhl.com)