Penguins forward Sidney Crosby to be sidelined 6 weeks following wrist surgery

Penguins general manager Ron Hextall knew he was going to be missing a franchise center when his team’s season opened Oct. 12.

Now, he will be short a pair of all-time greats at the pivot when they visit the Tampa Bay Lightning in just over a month for the first game of the NHL’s 2021-22 campaign.

On Wednesday, captain Sidney Crosby underwent an unspecified procedure on his left wrist and is expected to be sidelined for a minimum of six weeks. Should that time frame hold true, Crosby will miss the first four games of the regular season.

The team already was facing the expected absence of Evgeni Malkin, who underwent surgery on his right knee in June and is expected to miss a significant portion of the upcoming season.

“I talked to Sid yesterday,” Hextall said via conference call. “I said, ‘I haven’t replaced you yet, and it’s probably going to be pretty hard.’ You don’t replace players like that.”

While Crosby, 34, and Malkin, 35, are a few years removed from their prime, they remain the top two centers on a team that still views itself as a Stanley Cup contender.

Now, Jeff Carter, 36, and Teddy Blueger, 27, are the Penguins’ top two centers, at least until Crosby can make a presumed return to the lineup by mid- or late October.

“Obviously, when you have the number of points out of the lineup that we’re going to have with (Malkin) and Sid (absent), you need to tighten things up,” Hextall said. “Our defense and goaltending, we’ve got to be tight. But up front, we need guys to step up offensively and do a good job for us.

“We’ve got a lot of proven players, obviously, that have scored a lot of goals and made a lot of plays in this league. We have enough talent to hold the fort when Sid gets back and then when (Malkin) gets back. … We have got heavy work to do early in the season and we have to get off to a good start.”

In 2020-21, Crosby appeared in 55 of 56 games and led the team to the East Division title with 62 points (24 goals, 38 assists).

Hextall said Crosby had been dealing with an unspecified ailment with his left wrist for several years, and this surgery was related to a procedure he had performed in August 2020 on the same appendage.

Why did they wait until such a late stage of this offseason to have surgery?

Hextall was vague as to that question.

“There was a process to go through at the end of the (2020-21) season,” Hextall said. “Obviously, it had bothered him. Sid has been dealing with it numerous years now. At the end of the (previous season), you let the body heal, test things out. There’s just a process that it takes weeks to figure out where the wrist is at, whether it can get through another year. At some point, you ramp things up along the way.

“The conclusion that we came to was this procedure was the best way to proceed. We all, including Sid, wish if we had known this a month or two months ago, it would be great. But we are where we are. But on the positive side, we have four weeks before we play a regular-season game.”

It remains to be seen how many weeks (or months) Malkin might miss. Hextall declined to offer any specifics as to his status.

“We’ll get to that once he gets to training camp there and he sees the (doctor),” Hextall said. “We’ll have a better idea where he’s at, at that point.”

As for who will replace so many points in the lineup, Hextall expressed optimism over his team’s depth at center below Carter and Blueger.

“Well, it’s not ideal,” Hextall said. “Let’s be honest. But we’re not going to sit there and feel sorry for ourselves. We still have to find ways to win games. We’re not going to replace Sid and (Malkin), obviously.

“We’ll need different guys to step up on any given night. We’re going to have to play a hard brand of hockey. Have some guys step up. There’s going to be opportunity for players like Evan Rodrigues and (Radim) Zohorna and (Michael) Chaput, (Dominik) Simon … bringing Brian Boyle to camp here.

“This is going to have be a group effort to kind of make up the deficit that we have here. There’s no sense crying about it. Every team goes through it. And we’re going through it.”

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