If you’re tired of hearing speculation about Sidney Crosby potentially leaving the Pittsburgh Penguins, I have some bad news for you. His agent, Pat Brisson, just poured gallons of gasoline on the fire in a recent piece by Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic
“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.”
He’s an agent. He always wants his client to have success on both the personal and team level. More success means more money, usually. I’m not all that surprised to see this coming from his agent.
“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.”
But this part seems a bit extra. This is the agent trying to pressure Kyle Dubas and the Penguins to break out of their current rebuilding plans in order to check the box that Crosby is in the playoffs. Pay no mind to the fact that there isn’t a legit path to being a contender at the moment. There’s no proper way to rush this process, and half-assing things will only lead to being in a long-term rut where the Penguins would toil in irrelevance. Too good for the quality draft picks and too bad to actually compete. You absolutely cannot make a hard pivot right now.
I still find it hard to believe that when Crosby took all summer to sign his extension that he was unaware of the kinds of things Kyle Dubas was going to do during the term of his new deal. Blindsiding Crosby would be unforgivable, and it is why I don’t believe that to be the case. The other option is that Sidney Crosby is dense, and we know that isn’t the case, either.
Here’s what Sid has to say
“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.”
This reads to me like his classic captain speak. I don’t think there’s anything of note in here.
As for Dubas, I don’t envy him being put in the middle of this
“As Sidney says during his availability, our focus right now is on our younger players coming into camp with high hopes and the battles for roster spots that we have ahead of us. We have no control over speculation or the desires of other teams, markets or members of the media. Our focus is on returning the Pittsburgh Penguins to perennial contender status as urgently as possible. Taking away our focus from that task would only slow down from a job that requires our full attention and nothing less.”
It’s really the only answer he can give right now.
I don’t doubt that Pat Brisson wants Crosby to move to another team with a better chance of making the playoffs in the 2025-26 season. I also think he probably wanted Sidney Crosby to ditch his 8.7M superstition with his contract. Yet, here we are all these years later with a cap ceiling jumping from 56M to 95M, and Crosby with the same AAV.
Sidney Crosby is one of the few players in the league who probably doesn’t need an agent at all. He can name his price and his team. If he wants to leave the Penguins he is going to leave the Penguins. If he wants to stay he is going to stay. I don’t think his agent is going to sway him one way or another.
I do think the Team Canada events of the past two years might play in the Penguins favor. Crosby getting his playoff fix in the Four Nations and Olympics might be enough to keep his one franchise legacy going.
Ultimately, I think this is Brisson trying asset pressure externally to rush the Penguins through their rebuild. It’s up to Sid if he wants to stick it out or not.
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