Say Goodbye to Peak Crosby

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports Canada.

“What’s wrong with Sidney Crosby?” is akin to asking, “Why are all these 100-dollar bills overflowing from my suitcase so wrinkly?” Chances are, you’re a person who seeks out the negative in everything and is only truly happy when splashing around in the misery of others.

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But… you know… what’s wrong with Sidney Crosby?

A five-game point streak that ended Tuesday has Crosby at five goals and 15 points through 24 games, which remains a pedestrian number. Crosby is fifth in NHL history with 1.33 points per game; sometimes thinkpieces about him are brought about by the high standard he has set for himself during a decade of dominance, but in this case, seeing him tied in points with Victor Rask and Cam Atkinson through a quarter of the season makes the situation worth discussing.

The fluidity of hockey, the game itself and the players on the ice with a particular player, all make it nearly impossible to pinpoint an exact cause for one player’s struggles. There are also potential unforeseen circumstances that can go into a player not looking like himself, things like the health issue of a family member or an unshakable belief that John Krasinski will never star in a good movie.

Here are five reasons why Crosby is having his worst offensive season at the age of 28:

It’s the blue line’s fault

Before Mike Johnston arrived from the Portland Winterhawks of the Western Hockey League, the Penguins were a high-flying circus on ice. In the three seasons prior to his arrival, the team finished fifth, first, and first in goals per game. With Johnston’s system in place, the Penguins placed 19th last season and sit 23rd in offence this season.

How can a team that added Phil Kessel find itself crashing offensively?

There are differences between the system of Johnston and his predecessor, Dan Bylsma, but the big one is how the Penguins leave their zone. Bylsma was all about the stretch pass, while Johnston wants his defencemen to give and receive support through the defensive and neutral zones.

It was Kessel’s acquisition that received all the headlines, but the makeover on defence has had the biggest impact on the Penguins’ fortunes. Christian Ehrhoff and Paul Martin weren’t re-signed, leaving Ian Cole and Brian Dumoulin to shoulder the load. Throw in the downgrade of swapping Simon Despres for Ben Lovejoy and the fact Olli Maatta has been about as unlucky as it gets health-wise, and the Penguins’ back end is not close to what it was a year ago.

What does this have to do with Crosby? If the defencemen are unable to get the puck to the forwards, the forwards will have a hard time putting the puck in the net.

When Crosby, who has a Corsi of 46.9 percent, is on the ice with Kris Letang, with whom he has spent nearly half his five-on-five minutes with this season, his Corsi sits at 50.5 percent; with Lovejoy and Dumoulin, Crosby’s next two most regular defencemen, he’s at 42.9 and 43.2 percent, respectively. And while he has played only 64 of his 331 five-on-five minutes with Maatta, he has a 53.4 percent Corsi when they share the ice.

It’s cliché, but hockey is a team sport, even for the great individuals. It’s probably not a coincidence that Crosby’s numbers have nosedived while the quality of defencemen around him has done the same.

The power play stinks

A Penguins power play at 17.2 percent is like walking out of a Daniel Day-Lewis movie and thinking, “That was terrible.” We’ve grown accustomed to a certain level of greatness and entertainment and suddenly the Penguins’ power play is more cringe-worthy than an Adam Sandler movie about how his adopted son is a fart cloud or something.

The power play is trending in the right direction, however, as it has scored in seven consecutive games. Even with that push, it still ranks 22nd.

Last season, when the power play was a shade below 20 percent, Crosby’s five-on-four shooting percentage was 12.4 percent; the year before that, it was 14.1 percent, and the year before that it was 13.4 percent. This season, it’s 12.2 percent.

He’s averaging 1.34 shot attempts per game on the power play after a mark 1.09 last season. But after notching 29 power-play points during the 2014-15 campaign, he’s on pace for 22. Last season, the Penguins averaged 3.09 power plays per game; this season, that number has jumped to 3.70, so the chances are coming in abundance.

Crosby appears to be doing what he was last season but the pucks have yet to fill the net with the same regularity. It seems like it’s only a matter of time before the power play and Crosby begin to get some bounces with the man advantage, as luck has not been on his side.

Injuries are taking a toll

Not every 28-year-old lives the same 28 years. Even by professional sports standards, Crosby has had a pretty rough go of it.

Two concussions, one of which the Penguins said was a neck injury, and another incident in which Crosby had his jaw and teeth broken by a deflected slap shot are enough “upper-body” injuries to last a lifetime. No one can say for sure what that level of trauma does to a human being over the long term.

Crosby returned to form after those brain-rattling injuries, but the injury that may have slowed him is the one to his right wrist.

Crosby didn’t look like himself during the 2014 playoffs, and it was later revealed that he had a right wrist injury. He opted for rest over surgery and was ready for the start of the 2014-15 season. He since has 99 points in 101 games, the type of production almost every player dreams about yet far below Crosby’s standards.

Is it possible the wrist never returned to 100 percent? He has 303 shots over those 101 contests, an average of 3.0 per game; in his previous three seasons, he averaged 3.32 shots per game. The difference is an average of 25 shots per season, and for a player shooting 14 percent for his career, that’s about three or four goals being left on the table.

He does, however, have a 9.2 shooting percentage over the last two seasons. How much of that is bad shooting luck and how much is a player’s hands betraying him?

The lack of Chris Kunitz

You made jokes. I made jokes. Heck, we all made jokes about Kunitz being included on the 2014 Canadian Olympic team to play alongside Crosby. Oh, sure, it’s so hard to play with the best player in the world, so yeah, let’s bring Kunitz instead of someone more talented.

Yet here we are, with the 2015-16 season well underway, wondering what’s wrong with Crosby, and he’s hardly played at all with Kunitz. Kunitz was Pittsburgh’s top Fenwick player a season ago at 56.4 percent and is second on the team this season at 53.2 percent.

Crosby’s most regular linemate last season was Kunitz, who was on the ice for 538 of Crosby’s 1,135 minutes (47.4 percent) at five-on-five; this season, Kunitz has been on the ice for 109 of Crosby’s 331 minutes (32.9 percent) at five-on-five. When together, Crosby has a 52.1 percent Corsi; when apart, the number plummets to 44.4 percent.

Say what you want about Crosby smuggling Kunitz in his luggage to Sochi, but for whatever reason these two work extremely well together. Maybe Crosby is on another level intellectually and Kunitz is one of the few Penguin forwards able to consistently get on that same wavelength. It would be great if we could quantify everything with numbers, but there’s something to be said about the way Kunitz and Crosby have clicked over the years.

This is the new normal

Time is undefeated in the battle against life. The greatest athletes are all destroyed by time and Crosby is not immune to it. He has played a decade’s worth of games and absorbed enough physical abuse to cover an entire career.

Even if the defence gets healthy, the power play improves and Kunitz proves to be the tonic for what ails him, maybe we should accept that peak Crosby is gone forever and that Very Good Crosby is our new standard.

(Corsi and Fenwick statistics courtesy stats.hockeyanalysis.com)