Looking at Evgeni Malkin’s place in hockey history on his 38th birthday

Celebrating the birthday of the Pens’ other star center

Let’s pause to celebrate one of the greatest hockey players of all time today on the occasion of Evgeni Malkin’s 38th birthday. Malkin has given no shortage of electric moments in his career, this slapshot playoff short-handed goal against the Flyers is always a great memory.

Malkin has been one of the longest continually tenured Penguins ever, having been drafted by Pittsburgh in 2004 and playing 1,145 games with the team starting with the 2006-07 season. In the shadow of a teammate Sidney Crosby, and countryman Alex Ovechkin, Malkin might just be the most under-appreciated and recognized great of this era.

If there’s any downfall, it’s that he hasn’t blessed us recently with many pictures of various wildlife or animals.

Malkin just completed an age-37 season where he scored 67 points (27G+40A) while playing all 82 games. As active and feisty as ever, he also led the NHL with 90 takeaways last season.

With two more years on his NHL contract, Malkin has talked of his hopes for finishing his career strong and alongside Crosby.

The 2024-25 season should hold some early milestones for Geno; he sits at 498 career goals, 798 assists and 1,296 points. Upon hitting those round numbers, Malkin will join Crosby and Lemieux (and Jaromir Jagr to round out the Pens’ ridiculous Mount Rushmore) as being one of only 20 players all-time to reach 500 goals and 800 assists. (The Pens also have ties to Ron Francis, Mark Recchi and Bryan Trottier to boast an unreal amount of names in the roll call for this exclusive club!)

Malkin sits comfortably in third place in Penguin history in all of those major scoring categories behind Mario Lemieux and Crosby. He ranks third in active players for scoring behind Crosby and Ovechkin.

Looking at all-time marks like that re-establishes how lucky we have all been to have a front row seat to Malkin’s career. Here’s to a few more like this in the next games to come.