Crosby laments losing series

Penguins captain said tying goal on ‘terrible rule’ was the difference

“He has to come off, by rule. I think it stinks. He has to come off. His helmet got pulled off intentionally but that’s the rule.”

Mike Sullivan Penguins head coach

It's rare for Sidney Crosby to offer any controversial remarks so his critical comments after the Pittsburgh Penguins lost Game 7 to the New York Rangers raised some eyebrows.

New York's Artemi Panarin eliminated the Penguins with a power-play goal in overtime but the game never would've made it that far if not for a late Rangers goal that tied it at 3-3. New York's Mika Zibanejad scored with 5:45 left, but only after Pittsburgh's Marcus Petterson had to go to the bench after Rangers winger Alexis Lafreniere ripped the helmet off his head.

NHL rules state that a player who loses his helmet will be penalized unless he leaves the ice immediately or puts his helmet back on. When Petterson elected to skate to the bench from deep in his own end, Zibanejad took advantage of the moment of chaos to square the game.

"Tonight I think was an example of one game, anything can happen and we didn't get that extra goal late in the game and a terrible rule probably ends up being the difference in the game," Crosby said in his post-game media session.

Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan was just as peeved when asked about it during his round of interviews.

"He has to come off, by rule," Sullivan said. "I think it stinks. He has to come off. His helmet got pulled off intentionally but that's the rule."

Considering how miniscule the margin for error was in the series, the frustration from the Penguins is understandable. They led the bestof-seven 3-1 and were ahead 2-0 in Games 5 and 6, as well up by one goal twice in Game 7, but couldn't finish off the Rangers.

"I don't know, I think we played the right way," Crosby said. "I think if you look at Game 5, we had a tough span of a few minutes and Game 6 probably an even shorter span than that when they got back in the game. Tonight we were just on the wrong end of some bad bounces. We played a great game tonight and we played some good hockey throughout the series. We didn't get that next one tonight, that probably was the difference, but I think even when we had those leads we still played the right way."

With Crosby's 35th birthday coming up this summer and longtime teammates Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang also well into the back end of their careers, the talk around Pittsburgh is whether the

Penguins will keep the trio together for another year or more. Letang is 35 and Malkin turns 36 in July.

“It’s a possibility,” said Crosby, who won the Stanley Cup with Malkin and Letang in 2009, 2016 and 2017. “I think we knew that coming into the playoffs but I think you try not to really think about that, you just hope to make a good run. But it’s something in the back of your mind.”

On an even broader scale, Cole Harbour’s Crosby hopes to see as much of this year’s roster back for another run in 2022-23. The Penguins finished seventh in the Eastern Conference at 51-26-5 and he produced 84 points in 69 games.

“It’s not up to me but obviously I’ve had a great experience playing with these guys over the years and know what they bring. I love our group,” Crosby said. “If you look at our group this year and you look at the guys that had career years and what we had to go through to get to this point, a lot of people didn’t expect us to get this far, let alone get in the playoffs.

“But we had high expectations and we battled through a lot and so many guys contributed. I think for all those reasons we thought we’d still be playing. It’s tough. We did a lot of good things and guys left it out there.”

This is the fourth straight year the Penguins have failed to advance to the second round. Crosby is under contract for another three years and is just as hungry as ever to win another Cup so the Penguins will need to find a way to surround him with a championship supporting cast.

“We had tons of adversity and the way we played all series, I thought we did a really good job throughout the series of getting better and getting leads,” he said. “The only thing we couldn’t do was put them away when we got leads, whether that was defending against it or getting that next one. That ended up being a big difference in the series.”