Some players who compile 100 points would be perfectly content to mail it in defensively. Sidney Crosby is not one of those guys.
As Crosby enters his 15th NHL season, and as he climbs the all-time scoring list, Crosby has is stepping up his defensive game. Last year, Crosby racked up the second-highest number of takeaways (54) of his career, ranking behind only his 2008-09 campaign. He also posted the second-best Defensive Point Share (DPS) total of his career. DPS measures the value of a skater’s defensive contributions in terms of his team’s overall points total in the standings. Crosby chipped in 2.4 points with his strong defensive play in 2018-19, which places behind only his 2.8 DPS in 2013-14. He ranked 14th among all NHL forwards, and ninth among centers, in DPS last year.
Here’s another interesting part of Crosby’s game in his thirties: He’s creating a ton of offense, but he’s spreading the wealth more often.
Crosby posted his lowest shots per game total (2.8) of his career last season, and his highest assists per game total (0.82) in five seasons. Thanks to stat-cruncher Corey Sznajder, who recently created a public database of zone entries and exits, we can see just how well Crosby generated offensive chances in certain situations. Last year, Crosby carried the puck while transitioning between zones an average of 15.7 times per 60 minutes of even-strength ice time. The NHL average for forwards is about 10 carries between zones per 60 minutes. So, Crosby possesses the puck a ton when the Penguins are in transition. But he then passes the puck 43 percent of the time when transitioning between zones, which is the highest rate among all forwards and is nearly two and a half times above the NHL average (17.7 percent). Somewhere, Jake Guentzel is grinning.
MORE PENGUINS
• Clone Pettersson? The Penguins face an interesting decision with defenseman Marcus Pettersson in 2019-20 — and I don’t just mean in creating enough cap room to get him inked to a longer-term contract. Pettersson’s swift skating, puck handling and defensive prowess show that he’s ready for top-four minutes next season. But if they split up Pettersson and Jack Johnson, and have a third-line pairing of Johnson and fellow big man Erik Gudbranson, things could get ugly. When Johnson skated with Pettersson during five-on-five play last season, the Penguins scored half of the game’s total goals and had 48 percent of total shots generated. When Johnson skated with another defensive partner at even strength, the Penguins scored just 41 percent of total goals and generated 45 percent of shots. If you take Pettersson off Johnson’s line, an already slumping player falls further into the abyss. On the other hand, Pettersson deserves more minutes, and you can make the case that Johnson may have dragged down Pettersson’s game. Pettersson’s goals-for rate jumped to 65.7 percent when he skated with a defender other than Johnson, with the Penguins generating 54.3 percent of total shots.
