The Future of Sidney Crosby is Tied to What the Actual Direction of the Penguins Is
TSN Director of Scouting Craig Button joined SportsCenter, and when asked about the Pittsburgh Penguins and Sidney Crosby’s future, he stated that nobody knows what Crosby will do in the future, not even him.
NHLRumors.com transcription
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Host: “Let’s bring in our Director of Scouting, Craig Button to talk about this Pittsburgh Penguins downward spiral that continued in our nation’s capitol on Tuesday. Craig, they had lost seven of eight and scored just two goals in four consecutive losses now since that Jake Guentzel trade and then you got the future of Sidney Crosby, which has been a hot topic of late. If you were in charge of the Penguins, Craig, how would you deal with this Captain situation and just going forward here with Pittsburgh?
Craig Button: “Well, the captain situation is directly correlated to the Pittsburgh Penguins situation, and since 2005, Sidney Crosby has been the face of the NHL. And it goes without saying the face of the Pittsburgh Penguins and all the success that the penguins had during that time in Pittsburgh.
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When you look at it, and certainly Sidney Crosby, I don’t even know if he knows what he’s going to do. There’s a lot of handicapping should he stay, should he go, what would you do and I don’t have any reason to believe that Sidney Crosby would even know what he would want to do.
But as a manager now, you have to include Sidney Crosby in all the discussions. Here’s how I see the team moving forward. Here’s what I have to do. Here’s where some of the challenges are going to be. And then Sidney Crosby now can take in all that information and understand the impact on him, and then take it from that position forward and say, ‘Okay, maybe it is in my best interest to leave or maybe it is in my best interest to stay.’
I don’t think Sidney Crosby is in any type of position to know what his future is until he hears very clearly from the manager what the direction that he wants to go in with the franchise. Then I think Sidney Crosby can take a deep breath and start to consider what his future may look like. His contract expires in 2025. That’s one year left on his contract. Kyle Dubas went and tried to reinforce the group around Sidney Crosby.
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Sidney Crosby hasn’t failed the Pittsburgh Penguins. In fact, I don’t even think, everybody talks about the older core, I don’t even think they failed the Pittsburgh Penguins. It was the 10 players after the first 10 that have done very little for the Pittsburgh Penguins. So how can that improve in a year’s time?
To me, that’s the message that Sidney Crosby needs to hear for him to be able to take in all the information so that he can ascertain Okay, what do I want to do? Nobody’s gonna question Sidney Crosby’s loyalty, but in the same breath, I don’t think anybody would question Sidney Crosby’s competitive fire to maybe go somewhere else and try to compete for another Stanley Cup outside the Steel City.”