Heading into his 18th season with the Pittsburgh Penguins, Sidney Crosby doesn’t have much left to prove. He has won almost every award and nearly achieved every accolade that one could imagine in his NHL career. However, there is still one record that could be added to his legacy, the NHL all-time points list.
The Penguins all-time leader in points is Mario Lemieux, who scored 1,723 in his truncated career in Pittsburgh. Crosby recently shared that his goal is to play six more seasons, meaning that record is not out of reach. He could potentially finish in the top five on the NHL all-time scoring list, and it starts to heat up this season. While Crosby has already reserved his spot in the Hockey Hall of Fame, this feat would chisel his spot on the Mount Rushmore of hockey, leaving one final accolade on his resume.
Crosby currently sits tied with Dale Hawerchuk for 21st all-time in points scored with 1,409 and has shown no signs of slowing down in production. He has eclipsed a point per game in all 17 seasons, including 84 points in 69 games last season.
With no reported injuries heading into this season, there is no reason to believe that he won’t finish the year between 80-90 points again, moving him as high as 15th all-time, behind former Penguin Paul Coffey.
Next season may become the most important for Crosby if he wants to reach the top five. At 36 years old, Crosby will need to replicate his point-per-game pace for another season to stay on track.
That would mean 19 seasons registering over a point per game, a feat only Wayne Gretzky has accomplished. Another 90-point season would land him right around Phil Esposito at 10th in NHL history (1,590 points).
Then at 37 years old, Crosby will enter the final year of his contract. No one can predict how a player will age or when he will decline. For example, Tom Brady remains one of the top players in the NFL at 45 years old, while Peyton Manning was a shell of himself at 39 years old when he retired.
In the 2024-25 season, Crosby will need to record a 60-point season to remain on pace. It would become his first year under a point per game at 0.73. That would pass only Joe Sakic for ninth all-time but would put him in a position to continue climbing at 1,649 points, 73 points behind Lemieux.
Things could get interesting in the summer of 2025. With his contract up, will Crosby still have the desire to continue his career and chase down that top-five spot? By that summer, his long-time teammates and friends Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang will presumably still be under contract. Malkin will be heading into his final season, but Letang will have three years left. The exact amount that Crosby stated to want to play earlier this summer.
If he plays those final three seasons with Letang before calling it quits, he will need to average 50 points per season. With that pace, Crosby will finish the 2027-28 season with 1,799 points, one point above former Penguin Ron Francis for fifth all-time.
He would have passed Lemieux the season prior (2026-27) for the Penguins all-time scoring lead. In that hypothetical final season, Crosby will also have jumped his childhood hero Steve Yzerman, who currently sits seventh in all-time scoring.
The primary caveat in all of this is health. Can Crosby play consistently through the age of 40 without missing significant time while still being able to produce in large quantities? If so, there is still one other factor that could stand in his way, Alex Ovechkin.
Crosby and Ovechkin have been in lockstep their entire careers. From a Calder trophy race for the ages to several playoff battles, these two legends have been eye to eye for 17 seasons. Ovechkin currently sits above Crosby by one point and is in a chase of his own with Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goals record.
Ovechkin is coming off his best season in over a decade, scoring 90 points in 77 games. Will Ovi be able to continue his overall point production while striving to chase down Gretzky’s record? He would have to duplicate his best season since 2009-10 two more times while being two years older than Crosby.
Over the past 17 years, Sidney Crosby has proven he is a pathological winner. Winning three Stanley Cups, multiple Olympic Gold Medals, and capturing nearly every trophy the NHL has to offer, there isn’t much that Crosby hasn’t achieved.
While a fourth Stanley Cup remains the primary focus for Crosby and the Penguins, this race to the top five will begin coming to the forefront this season as Crosby breaks into the top 20.
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