Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby reached another major career milestone on Saturday night when he became just the 21st player in NHL history to score 600 career goals.
His goal came at the 3:11 mark of the second period in Saturday’s game against the Utah Hockey Club.
Here it is.
This has been the Penguins’ worst season since Crosby’s rookie year back in 2005-06, but Crosby remains a bright spot and is still one of the best players in hockey even at age 37.
Crosby has not only been the best player of his era, but he is one of the NHL’s all-time greats and has more than exceeded the hype that surrounded him when he entered the league nearly two decades ago. He has helped lead the Penguins to four Stanley Cup Final appearances and three Stanley Cup championships, while the team also made the playoffs 16 years in a row between 2006-07 and 2021-22. They have missed the playoffs in each of the past two seasons and are likely to do so again this season.
The big “What if?” of Crosby’s career is going to be what his career numbers would look like had so much of his prime years not been lost to concussion issues and a couple of NHL lockouts.
When Crosby was at his peak offensively between the 2010-11 and 2012-13 seasons he was able to play in just 99 games during those three years. Had it not been for the injuries and the lockout (not to mention the two pandemic-shortened seasons) he would probably already be closing in on 700 goals if he had not already surpassed it.
It is possible that Crosby could climb as high as 16th on the all-time goals list this season as Jarome Iginla (625), Joe Sakic (625), Bobby Hull (610), Dino Ciccarelli (608) and Jari Kurri (601) are all within reach.
