The agent for Penguins franchise icon Sidney Crosby, Pat Brisson of CAA Sports, spoke to Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic about his client’s future in Pittsburgh ahead of a season that has the Pens positioned as one of the few true sellers in the league. While LeBrun stressed that Crosby “for sure only sees himself as a Penguin for life” entering his 21st NHL season, his camp is giving him plenty of room to change his mind if Pittsburgh’s showing this season is as poor as expected.
When asked directly if a Crosby trade before the end of his deal in 2026-27 is possible, Brisson had this to say:
I mean, I’m answering something that … let’s put it this way, it’s always a possibility, you know? It’s been three years they haven’t made the playoffs. It all depends on how Sid is going to be and how the team is going to do. I maintain the same position that I do believe that he should be playing playoff hockey every year. In my opinion.
There remains virtually no chance of a surprise Crosby blockbuster before the start of the season. The Penguins haven’t even managed to trade one of their three major trade chips, wingers Rickard Rakell and Bryan Rust and defenseman Erik Karlsson, in the six-plus months they’ve been available dating back to last season’s trade deadline. Crosby could have both those forwards as his wingmen to open the season, either to squeeze as much production out of them as possible to boost their trade stock or simply to give this Penguins team a fighting chance at being in the mix for the playoffs.
As Penguins general manager Kyle Dubas told LeBrun, that remains the organization’s goal – whether that’s via resurgent veterans or ahead-of-schedule growth from the young talent they’ve been busy accumulating over the past several months. “Our focus is on returning the Pittsburgh Penguins to perennial contender status as urgently as possible, “Dubas said. “Taking away our focus from that task would only slow down from a job that requires our full attention and nothing less.”
Crosby himself gave a more in-depth quote on where his mindset is at entering the season to Daily Faceoff’s Matt Larkin:
It’s not something you want to discuss. You’d rather be talking about who we’re getting at the (trade) deadline or, you know, where we’re at as far as, are we one or two or three in the division?. But you know, it’s one of those things. That’s the hard part about losing. I think everybody thinks that the buzzer goes and you lose a game and that sucks, but there’s so much more than that. It’s the (roster) turnover. It’s the unknown, the uncertainty, the question marks — that’s the stuff that’s tough. It makes you appreciate all those years that we were competing and going after the big acquisition every single trade deadline. I don’t think I took it for granted, but I definitely appreciate it that much more now.