All 776 players Pittsburgh Penguins desk

Returning regular · 2025-26

Sidney Crosby

Pittsburgh Penguins · C · L shot · age 39 at the dated snapshot.

Team: PIT
Lane: C
Age: 39

Production and deployment

How the points were built

Official NHL 2025–26 regular-season reports. A missing split stays “—”; it is never converted to zero.

Games68

Goals29

Assists45

Points74

Even strength51all even-strength points

Power play23

Short handed0

Empty net3

5v5 points / 602.562

Average TOI19:14

PP TOI3:06

PK TOI0:02

Organizational context

7 C regulars in PIT

The all-team median is 7. PIT’s farm system ranks #20 in the maintained two-board consensus.

Thin lane

Questions a GM still has to answer

How much of the scoring comes at five-on-five, on special teams, or into an empty net?
Is the player creating the play, finishing it, or receiving a secondary point?
Does deployment reveal trust, scarcity, underuse, or a role the roster cannot offer?
What contract, acquisition cost, development alternative and Cup-window effect complete the argument?

Shot quality · 2025-26

Expected goals

CapOrCup's shot model (distance, angle, shot type, strength, rebounds, rushes), trained on 2023-24 and 2024-25 and tested on unseen games (AUC 0.756). Finishing is goals minus expected goals; it is noisy in one season.

Unblocked shots235

Expected goals19.58.3% per shot

Goals29

Finishing+9.5goals above expected

CapOrCup measures · 2025-26

What happens while he plays

Measured from the league's play-by-play and shift charts, not from the scoresheet. Expected goals are counted for every player on the ice, and a goal is credited to whoever was on the ice when the sequence began, including players who had changed off before it was scored.

Share of chance quality57%4.27 expected goals for and 3.23 against per 60 minutes

Drive, three seasons (ranking measure)+0.8 pts5v5 chance share against his club without him, over this season and the two before (weights 1 / 0.7 / 0.4; 1007 / 1228 / 1245 minutes) · 80% band -0.7 to 2.5 pts. This is the number the rankings order by: it predicts next season better than one season does.

Drive, this season only-4 ptsat 5-on-5, over 16.8 hours: his share minus the club's share when he is off the ice · with its 80% band: -3.5 pts, 80% band -6.6 to -0.7 pts

Setup (chances his passes produced)4.08 xG28 primary assists; 0.146 expected goals per pass on average, 0.187 per 60. A pass to a tap-in counts more than a pass to a point shot.

Drive, offence-0.05expected goals created per 60 with him on, minus the club without him

Drive, defence-0.33expected goals suppressed per 60 with him on, against the club without him; positive means fewer chances allowed

Isolated impact (RAPM), offence / defence+0.09 / -0.07expected goals per 60 at 5v5 with every teammate, opponent, score state, venue and zone start held as columns of one ridge regression; ± 0.10 / 0.10 SE over 1007 minutes

Offensive-zone starts69%of his faceoffs in either end zone; heavy offensive use lifts the numbers above

Chance share, score-and-venue adjusted (5v5)50%raw 50%; each shot weighted by the league's share in that score state and venue, so trailing at home is not mistaken for tilting the ice

Finish, shrunk (goals above expected per 100 shots)+0.7raw +3.6 on 235 shots; the data carries 26% of the weight, the league the rest (about 580 shots to weight the player one half)

Company (linemates / opponents)average / averageteammates -0.8, opponents -0.3 points of relative chance share, weighted by seconds shared

Start +/- (goals begun on his shift)772 of them were scored after he had changed off

On the ice for96 for, 66 againstthe plus/minus view, for comparison

Giveaways that led to a goal0his own turnovers inside the sequence, over 21.8 hours on the ice

Line or pairLine 1his rank by 5-on-5 ice time within the club, most common over 58 games

LinematesBryan Rust, Rickard Rakellshared 76% and 52% of his 5-on-5 time

Matchup67% vs first lines67% of his time against the other club's first line (hard matchups)

Shutdown (drive, defence, deployment removed)-0.12offence the same way -0.58; zone starts, opponent quality and first-line share removed by a league-wide fit

Two-way (offence + defence, deployment removed)-0.70chances created minus chances allowed per 60, against his club without him; a fast-paced player can allow more and still win here

Penalty kill1%1% of his club's penalty kill (rarely used) · 3 shorthanded minutes

Matchup rating (Elo)1530above the league middle · results by who he faced over 16.8 hours of 5-on-5; 52% chance share against the strongest opponents he saw most (Ivan Provorov, Yanni Gourde, Zach Werenski, Charlie Coyle, Pontus Holmberg)

Finish rating (Elo)1535top tenth of the league · 28 goals on 233 shots worth 19.7 expected; rated against the goalies and the chances actually faced, so the same goal counts more against a strong goalie from a poor spot

In the play-by-play25.0 per 60how often the league's feed names him on the puck (the moments a caller says a name): 28th percentile of forwards; the feed never records carries or passes that do not end in a goal

Faceoff rating (Elo)1516below the league middle · 738–576 (56%), rated by whom he beat and lost to

Power-play rating (Elo)1444above the league middle · 9.76 expected goals per 60 on the power play over 210 minutes, rated against the penalty-killers faced (league rate 8.27)

Shot-lane rating (Elo)1600top tenth of the league · 223 of 274 attempts got through (81%), rated against the defenders on the ice

Lane defence rating (Elo, unit)1524above the league middle · 354 of 1157 attempts faced were blocked while he was on (31%); shared with the four others on the ice

Turnover balance-2.20 per 6020 takeaways, 68 giveaways (11 in his own end) over 21.8 hours; recorded by the league's scorers, so counts differ by rink

Blocked shots and hits1.3 · 2.4 per 6029 blocks, 53 hits given, 31 taken, 17 penalties taken · faceoffs 56% of 1314

Real points723 empty-net points left out · 30 goals, 28 primary and 17 secondary assists · 23 on the power play

How these measures are defined, and where they stop.

Advanced scoring · 2025-26

Goals, assists and plus/minus, weighted by what they changed

Every goal counts the win probability it added, scaled so the average goal is 1.0: a late tying goal counts several, a goal at 6-1 or into an empty net late counts little. Plus/minus also credits the players on the ice when the goal's sequence began.

Advanced goals (aG)32.5from 29 goals · 4 clutch (worth twice an average goal or more) · +25.1 above the chances they came from

Advanced primary assists (aA1)25.6from 28 primary assists

Advanced secondary assists (aA2)22.1from 17 secondary assists; kept apart, not guessed at

Advanced points80.2against 74 scoresheet points

Advanced plus/minus (a+/-)+40.3on the ice for 106 goals for and 74 against, each weighted by what it changed · 2 of the goals for began on his shift after he had changed off · +1.85 per 60

Shot map · 2025-26

Where he shoots from, and how it goes

Every unblocked shot placed by distance, angle and shot type. His rate from each spot is set against the league's rate for the same shot from the same spot, so the edge is against everyone else taking that shot, not against an average.

His office (most-used spot)—fewer than 15 shots from any one spot

Crease (under 15 ft and inside 45°)20% of shots12 goals on 46 shots (26.1%, expected 15.3%)

Slot (under 30 ft and inside 40°)12% of shots3 goals on 28 shots (10.7%, expected 11.3%)

Circles (under 40 ft, wider)55% of shots12 goals on 129 shots (9.3%, expected 6.8%)

Point (40 ft and beyond inside 30°)5% of shots1 goals on 12 shots (8.3%, expected 3.1%)

Wall (40 ft and beyond, wide)8% of shots0 goals on 18 shots (0.0%, expected 1.8%)

Wrist shots12.5%11 of 88; expected 8.5%

Snap shots14.0%6 of 43; expected 11.2%

Tip-in shots12.8%5 of 39; expected 8.7%

Backhand shots12.1%4 of 33; expected 5.5%

From the video · model judgement

What the condensed games showed

Read from the league's free condensed games (1 game so far): entries, exits, battles and turnovers the model could see and attribute to his jersey number. A condensed game is a sample of the game, so these are observations, not season counts.

shots1over 1 game read

entries carried in1over 1 game read

Career arc · era-adjusted points per 82 games

Sidney Crosby, season by season

Each dot is one season. The amber bar is what his earlier seasons and his age predicted for that season (80% band), so a dot far above its bar is a season the numbers did not see coming. The shaded band is where most players at his position sit at each age.

Seasons on file212005-06 to 2025-26

Best season146.22011-12, age 24, 22 games

Latest season82.3expected 61.5 to 91.4

Measured labels0none that passed its test

his seasonexpected range from his earlier seasonsposition, 10th to 90th percentile by ageposition median

Position band: quantile regression (10th/50th/90th) of qualifying seasons on an age spline, weighted for players who drop out.

What the numbers found

No shipped label applies. A label is a measured finding about a run of seasons (for example, a spike that came back to the old level), and it is shown only for label types that passed their test on held-out seasons.

Projection at the draft

At the draft the model expected 141 NHL hours through his age-25 season (80% band 98 to 173). He logged 165 hours, between the median and the 90th percentile. The model was applied to his draft class without being fitted or tested on it.

Every season

Season	Age	GP	Level	Expected (80%)
2005-06	18	81	95.8	14.4 to 71.9
2006-07	19	79	120.6	83.0 to 113.8
2007-08	20	53	115.2	105.1 to 137.2
2008-09	21	77	108.0	106.4 to 137.1
2009-10	22	81	112.0	101.5 to 131.0
2010-11	23	41	136.3	99.7 to 133.1
2011-12	24	22	146.2	108.0 to 148.7
2012-13	25	36	135.2	116.6 to 153.9
2013-14	26	80	112.6	119.4 to 151.1
2014-15	27	77	94.5	102.8 to 132.6
2015-16	28	80	93.3	85.6 to 115.2
2016-17	29	75	102.0	78.7 to 108.5
2017-18	30	82	86.5	81.2 to 110.7
2018-19	31	79	99.4	71.3 to 100.7
2019-20	32	41	90.3	74.8 to 108.3
2020-21	33	55	90.8	70.5 to 103.3
2021-22	34	69	91.3	68.0 to 99.1
2022-23	35	82	84.2	67.3 to 96.9
2023-24	36	82	86.9	63.2 to 92.2
2024-25	37	80	88.3	62.1 to 91.1
2025-26	38	68	82.3	61.5 to 91.4

Source: CapOrCup careers desk (method and league curves) · as of 2026-09-29

Comparables at the same age

Who looked like this at 35 to 38

Careers are compared as league-adjusted points per game by age, over the same ages. The comparables below are the closest lines, and what matters is the spread of what they did next, not any single name.

Comparables found2

Went on to two or more NHL seasons2 of 2

Their later peak (adjusted pts/game)1.12median across the comparables; this player's own line is below

This player so far: age 14 NSMHL 2.61 → age 15 High-MN 2.84 → age 16 QMJHL 2.29 → age 17 QMJHL 2.71 → age 18 NHL 1.26 → age 19 NHL 1.52 → age 20 NHL 1.36 → age 21 NHL 1.34 → age 22 NHL 1.35 → age 23 NHL 1.61 → age 24 NHL 1.68 → age 25 NHL 1.56 → age 26 NHL 1.30 → age 27 NHL 1.09 → age 28 NHL 1.06 → age 29 NHL 1.19 → age 30 NHL 1.08 → age 31 NHL 1.27 → age 32 NHL 1.15 → age 33 NHL 1.13 → age 34 NHL 1.22 → age 35 NHL 1.13 → age 36 NHL 1.15 → age 37 NHL 1.14 → age 38 NHL 1.09

All 3 columns shown

Player	Distance (lower is closer)	What he did afterwards
Alex OvechkinL · matched at ages 35, 36, 37, 38	0.18	age 39 NHL 1.12 → age 40 NHL 0.78
Corey PerryR · matched at ages 35, 36, 37, 38	0.69	age 39 NHL 0.37 → age 40 NHL 0.56

Reading it

If most comparables became NHL regulars and their later peak sits well above this player's current line, the numbers say there is room to grow. If most did not, the numbers say the odds are against it. Either way it is what the data shows, not a name chosen to flatter.

Atlantic

Metropolitan

Central

Pacific

Sidney Crosby

How the points were built

7 C regulars in PIT

LAK

CAR

WSH

Questions a GM still has to answer

PIT do not play today

Sidney Crosby is among the most talked-about (99th percentile); attention is up on the usual

$8.70M cap hit