The Pittsburgh Penguins have a lot of problems so far this season, and one of the most surprising is the fact the Sidney Crosby line is consistently getting outplayed every night.
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Not just consistently outplayed, but also significantly outplayed.
There is going to come a point in Crosby’s career where he no longer dominates or can carry a line by himself, and while I am not prepared to see that we are at that point right now, we might be getting close to it.
This is relatively uncharted territory for both Crosby and the Penguins. For the better part of the past decade, we knew Crosby was going to play next to Jake Guentzel and those two were going to go to work and make magic happen on the ice.
With Guentzel gone, we are now back to the “searching for a winger for Crosby” days.
The early returns so far this season in their attempts to find that winger have not been good no matter what combination they have tried to put out there, with one lone exception.
The one combination that has actually worked has been the limited times they have played Rickard Rakell on Crosby’s wing, which was the primary usage in the first two games of the season. They have not really gone back to it since.
As former Penguins beat writer Danny Shirey mentioned on Wednesday, it is probably time to give it a try again.
Just to expand on those numbers and dig in a little deeper for some comparison, the three most common line combinations the Penguins have used for Crosby are highlighted in the table below, along with the early season results.
You can see one line has been very good, while the other two have been very, very bad.
Very bad.
Sidney Crosby Line Combinations So Far This Season
| Line | Minutes | Goals/60 | Goals Against/60 | GF% | xGF/60 | xGA/60 | xGF% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beauvillier-Crosby-Rakell | 18.7 | 6.4 | 0.0 | 100.0 | 3.52 | 1.92 | 64.7 |
| O'Connor-Crosby-Rust | 25.1 | 0.0 | 7.18 | 0.0 | 5.27 | 6.22 | 45.8 |
| Beauvillier-Crosby-Rust | 45.5 | 0.0 | 3.96 | 0.0 | 3.34 | 5.54 | 38.2 |
In terms of expected goal share and expected goals against, the O’Connor-Crosby-Rust and Beauvillier-Crosby-Rust lines are not only the worst top-line combinations, they are among the worst line combinations the Penguins have used this season with any line.
They are not only not scoring goals, they are getting absolutely smoked defensively. It is not only just a problem, it is one of the biggest problems they have.
Brett Hull’s controversial triple-overtime goal for the 1999 Stanley Cup deserves a deep rewind
In game six of the 1999 Stanley Cup Finals, the Buffalo Sabres hosted the Dallas Stars and no one was aware how long of a night they were in for, nor how controversial the finish would be.
It is not happening with Drew O’Connor on that line, and it certainly is not happening right now with Bryan Rust on that line.
Rust missed some time at the start of the season due to injury, so it is possible he is still working his way back and perhaps not 100 percent healthy yet. Maybe in time he gets back to playing like he is capable of in that spot. But right now the Penguins are not really in a position to be patient and wait for him to figure it out and get back on track, especially when they could easily flip somebody else into that spot that they know has had success there.
Crosby and Rakell have actually played a lot of time together over the previous three years, logging 1,107 minutes of 5-on-5 ice-time together between the 2021-22 and 2023-24 seasons. During that time they outscored teams by a 66-42 margin, had a 57.4 percent expected goals share, a 59.2 scoring chance share and a 59.2 high-danger scoring chance share.
Along with that they averaged 3.53 expected goals per 60 minutes and only 2.62 expected goals against.
Along with having success together in the past, Rakell is off to a great start this season with four goals (tied for the team lead) in seven games. Granted, there is some shooting percentage luck there (he is scoring on over 22 percent of his shots on goal so far) but the bottom line is the puck is going in the net for him and he is making plays. They need all of that on the top line.
The Penguins attempted switching their defense pairs up for the start of Tuesday’s game when it became clear their top-four defense pairings were struggling. They should consider a similar swap here with their forward lines. Give Rakell a bigger role to reward him for his strong play to start the season. Give Crosby a finisher and player that is at least playing well right now to see if they can get that line going a little bit. They have to try something new, and this is the easiest type of change to make with the roster as it currently is. Will it fix everything, or even anything? Maybe not. It should still be tried.
