Sidney Crosby, Penguins to discuss contract extension in offseason

Despite playing great down the stretch in the regular season, the Pittsburgh Penguins narrowly missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and as Kyle Dubas heads into the offseason, the top priority is to get captain Sidney Crosby locked into a long-term contract extension as he is only under contract for one more season. Crosby will be able to sign an extension on July 1, and it seems likely that he will do that. Crosby told reporters that he will discuss that with Kyle Dubas soon.

“Obviously, I’m going to talk to Kyle and have a conversation with him,” Crosby said, via The Fourth Period. “But we’ll see. I think it’s just something that I’ll have conversations with him about.

Despite being 36 years old, Crosby still is playing at an incredible level, as he put up 42 goals with 52 assists this season for 94 points, according to NHL.com. The Penguins and Dubas will look to extend Crosby while putting a team together around him that can compete for a Stanley Cup championship.

What is Sidney Crosby’s outlook on the future?

Crosby did elaborate and say that he is not looking too far into the future when it comes to his career and contract status with the Penguins.

“I’ve always just gone year-to-year. That’s always kind of served me well as far as how I evaluate my game,” Crosby said, via The Fourth Period. “There’s always a lot of factors. I think that’s separate than talking contract, and obviously at my age, and things like that, there will be a lot of factors. But as far as evaluating my game, I don’t look any differently at how much longer I can play based off that. It’s always kind of just evaluating my game, not my age.”

Simply evaluating Crosby’s game from this past season, he still has it, and it would be a surprise if he were to fall of a cliff, given the talent he has always had. He also has some optimism for next season due to how the Penguins played down the stretch, and is also likely to influence some of the offseason moves for Dubas and Pittsburgh.

“I thnk it was encouraging,” Crosby said of the Penguins’ surge downt he stretch, according to The Fourth Period. “With the situation we were in, it could have went a lot of different ways. I thought everyone really came together. Every single guy contributed to us having a chance down the stretch. I think that’s something you can definitely build on.”

When Dubas took the job with the Penguins after leaving the Toronto Maple Leafs job, it was known that he would be tasked with putting together a team to try to make a run with Crosby and other veterans like Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang. It will be an interesting summer for the Penguins.