By: Jim Meinecke

Much has been made of Sidney Crosby’s struggles so far this season. He hasn’t been scoring like himself. He hasn’t looked like himself. It has been a big reason for the Penguins’ mediocrity so far this season, and it has led many folks to go as far as saying things like he is “not good anymore” or that “he has lost something.” While all of that may end up being true, it is always good to provide some context to these things. The reasons why are often just as important as the actual results.

As I mentioned on Twitter yesterday, there are a ton of reasons why Sidney Crosby’s production has gone down. The defense, which starts breakouts and can generate offense, has been awful. The power play, which has provided a ton of success and points for Crosby in years past, is broken and hasn’t looked right for almost a full year now. The NHL is calling penalties at historically low rates, and the Penguins are just leaving a head coaching era that focused more on defense and playing 200-feet, thus limiting offensive chances. Maybe most importantly, the wingers surrounding Sidney Crosby are under-performing as well. I took a look at those players a little more in-depth.

First, I looked at who Crosby’s line mates have been so far this season. The players with the most time on his wings were Chris Kunitz (14 games total – 12 games left wing and 2 games right wing), Patric Hornqvist (14 games right wing), and Pascal Dupuis (16 games left wing). Phil Kessel (7 games right wing) also had a decent chunk to start the season. I looked at goals per game, assists per game, points per game, and shots per game over the last five years. I then plotted these out:

The results didn’t really surprise me, but they do show that every single player is experiencing the same thing as Crosby this season. Kessel, Kunitz, Hornqvist, and Dupuis are all at five-year lows in every one of these categories. For some, they are flirting with their career worst in these areas. Eric Fehr and David Perron each had limited time with Crosby as well. Their past five seasons are detailed here:

Again, the same results. Generally, I saw a steady decline the last two to three seasons with the results for this season being a bit more staggering. Shots on goal per game took a nosedive. Goals per game, assists per game, and points per game all followed suit. Looking at it by percentages can be even more astounding. Patric Hornqvist, for example, is down 58.75% in points per game compared to last season (.80 per game in 2014-15 and .33 per game in 2015-16). Kessel had a modest drop at 18.92% and Dupuis was at the top with a 68.12% drop in points per game since last season. Kunitz, Fehr, and Perron were all somewhere in between, and Sidney Crosby is right in the middle with a 42.2% drop since last season. In fact, the only line mate who had a positive result is Beau Bennett. He is experiencing the best year since his rookie season, and is experiencing career highs in goals per game and shots on goal per game.

The following graphs show Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin over the same time period.

Even though Crosby’s struggles have been well-documented, it’s a bit more clear once it is graphed out. He has steadily declined in each of these categories, with the exception of goals per game, where he had a brief spike in 2012-13 and 2013-14. Evgeni Malkin’s result were a bit more surprising to me. Other than goals per game, he too is having career lows in assists, shots, and points per game. His points per game for the season currently sit at .90, which is a 10.89% drop from last season. His shots are still over 3 per game, but just barely at 3.03.

The last piece of the experiment brought me outside of the Penguins’ organization. I decided to chart Steven Stamkos and Jonathan Toews, two superstars who are often mentioned in the same breath as Crosby and Malkin.

These results were the most surprising to me so far. Both Stamkos and Toews are experiencing similar fates this season. For these players, this year signifies lows in every category I measured. Jonathan Toews is experiencing a 24.69% drop in points per game from last season, and last season had been his career low. Steven Stamkos is experiencing a 21.59% drop in points per game, and last season had been his career low as well.

I present these things to the readers for a couple of reasons. First, everything is better with a little bit of context. Is Sidney Crosby having a disappointing season? Yes. Does he need to play better? Yes. Any further conclusions are silly and a bit premature. To say that it is predominantly Crosby’s fault would be inaccurate, in my opinion. It is clear that a number of factors have affected his play and lack of offensive production. It is also clear that this phenomenon is not unique, which signifies a greater issue with the team and the league as a whole. Superstars that are having seasons like Patrick Kane and Tyler Seguin should be the norm and not the outliers. Currently, they are the outliers and not the norm. The only group that continues to suffer is the fanbase. Will Sidney Crosby ever be the same player again? I would say most definitely yes, but he certainly has a lot more going against him than meets the eye. My guess is that Penguins’ forwards will see an uptick in offensive production under Mike Sullivan, but the league needs to address questionable hits with more consistency and address neutral zone obstruction and interference penalties before a drastic change will be seen.

As always, thanks for reading.