Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby turns 38 this week. After two decades in the league, he’s lived up to every expectation placed on him. He was put in an almost impossible situation given the hype related to him as a player and then the lockout induced lottery to earn the rights to draft him. It would have been easy to come up short of those expectations. Crosby exceeded them, even breaking through the aging curve.
Crosby earned the right to choose his own path
I don’t have the power or ability to give him the gift I think he deserves to have for his birthday this year. There are too many bottom feeding algorithms to feed these days. Crosby deserves to be left the hell alone about his decision to stay with the Penguins.
Everybody is waiting for the Penguins veteran trio (Karlsson, Rust, Rakell) to be traded, but there’s nothing going on that front, for now. There are some other minor moves Kyle Dubas can still make and one of them might come from his original stomping grounds. Any goal of a trade will likely be to get younger
The Penguins could look towards someone like Nick Robertson as a target.
Robertson is a skilled player who plays with speed and Toronto might be looking for players who can fit better under structure and carry a high level of play away from the puck with Berube in charge. Given his lack of playoff minutes and fit with the team moving forward it makes him a likely candidate to be moved.
He will turn 24 during training camp and fits the bill of the Penguins trying to shed age on their roster. He’s a legit NHL player and can potentially provide quality depth minutes.
Personally, I can take it or leave it. This is the part of the rebuild where Dubas can throw darts and try to see what sticks. The cost to acquire shouldn’t be something prohibitive. The trick with a player like Robertson will be to play him with players who can drive play and he can finish. If he’s with guys who can’t drive play I would be concerned with the frequency he’ll have to cash in on his finishing ability which has been in the 14% range in his first two full NHL seasons.
In Pittsburgh, younger players should be given a longer leash to play through their mistakes, whereas in Toronto they don’t have the ability to have that kind of patience. A change of scenery is likely in order. Pittsburgh would make for a logical destination.
