Closing the books on another productive and successful year for the Penguin captain
It’s the start of another new year, which means in part the updating of another favorite feature here at Pensburgh: Sidney Crosby’s yearly point scoring.
Crosby is about to begin his 21st year of NHL action in 2005, and here are his stats broken out by calendar year over the 20 different years through 2024.
The most remarkable number might be 86 for games played, his second highest total for regular season games in a calendar year. The Penguins had 86 games, giving Crosby perfect attendance for another year.
The goal scoring wasn’t quite what it was back in 2022, but Crosby was able to raise his assist numbers in 2024 over what they were in 2023 to prove that age is not slowing down his point production just quite yet. Crosby’s 1.14 points/game in 2024 remains extremely strong for being 37 and then 38 years old in 2024. To that point, Crosby ended up eighth in the NHL in calendar 2024 with his 99 points. Not bad at all for an old guy.
2024 saw some major milestones; Crosby achieved scoring his 600th goal and also recorded his 1,000th assist and got to the 1,600th point plateau last year. And, of course, recently surpassed the iconic Mario Lemieux in assists to set the Penguin all-time mark (1,034 and counting).
In the big picture, Crosby entered 2024 with 1,538 points and in 13th place all-time in NHL scoring. Over this past year he was able to surpass the career totals of Joe Thornton, Ray Bourque and Phil Esposito to rise up to his current position of 10th all-time. He shouldn’t be 10th for much longer, Crosby is only four points behind Joe Sakic (1,641) for ninth place but then it will take a while to reach Lemieux in eighth (1,723).
With a strong 2025 and if his assist numbers can replicate 2024, Crosby could become only the fourth player in NHL history with 600+ goals and 1,100+ assists (joining Wayne Gretzky, Jaromir Jagr and Mark Messier).
In a wider look at an even bigger picture, Ron Francis (1,798) is 5th in all-time NHL scoring and that is 161 points away from Crosby right now. He won’t get there in 2025 but with his recent contract extension signing him up to play through April 2027, that figure should be well with in his potential reach. Crosby would probably need to sign another contract and play in 2027-28 to get up towards Messier (1,887) in 3rd place on the books.
Perhaps est of all, as touched on in the paragraph above, Crosby formalized long-standing plans to end his career as a one-team player by putting pen to paper in 2024 to commit to staying with the Penguins for a while longer (at an extremely team-friendly rate, at that). For that, and everything else over the years, we should all be grateful and thankful that the ride will continue for a while longer.
