The Penguins have signed captain Sidney Crosby to a two-year, $17.4M contract extension, the team announced. It carries a cap hit of $8.7M.
Crosby’s deal will be paid out mostly in signing bonuses, per PuckPedia. He’ll earn $780K in base salary with a $9M signing bonus in 2025-26 and a $1.09M base salary with a $6.53M signing bonus in 2026-27. As suspected, his contract includes a full no-move clause.
In an instant, a giant cloud that would have loomed over Pittsburgh’s training camp later this week dissipated. The two-year pact ends an unexpected extension saga that began two months ago after reports that Crosby and the Pens were finalizing a deal went unfulfilled.
Some anxiety returned when Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet said on the “32 Thoughts” podcast earlier this month that Crosby was still weighing multiple extension offers from the Penguins, but had yet to put pen to paper because he wasn’t sure whether he’d be able to “handle” missing the playoffs on a retooling club while still performing at an elite level. The 37-year-old told Friedman last week that he was “pretty optimistic” an extension would be done before training camp.
The two-year length shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. It allows the Penguins more salary-cap flexibility in the future should the aging curve finally come for Crosby, as alluded to by Friedman on Friday, and it also gives him another opportunity to move on from Pittsburgh in 2027 should the Penguins’ record not return to a meaningfully competitive level.
Entering his 20th season, Crosby is still the heart and soul of hockey in Pittsburgh. The 2005 first-overall pick finished ninth in both Hart and Selke Trophy voting last season after leading the Penguins in goals (42), assists (52), points (94), and shots on goal (278).
“There are no words to properly describe what Sidney Crosby means to the game of hockey, the city of Pittsburgh and the Penguins organization,” general manager Kyle Dubas said in a statement. “Sidney is the greatest player of his generation and one of the greatest players in the history of the game. His actions today show why he is one of hockey’s greatest winners and leaders. Sid is making a tremendous personal sacrifice in an effort to help the Penguins win, both now and in the future, as he has done for his entire career.”
Crosby could have become an unrestricted free agent for the first time next summer without an extension. The three-time Stanley Cup champion is entering the final season of the 12-year, $104.4M mega-deal with an $8.7M cap hit he signed in 2012. The first deal he signed following the expiry of his entry-level contract, a five-year, $43.5M pact that covered from 2008-09 to 2012-13, also had an $8.7M AAV.
He is still playing at a superstar level, yet this is a much more cost-effective contract for Pittsburgh than his previous ones. That first extension cost 15.34 percent of the cap when it went into effect in 2008, while today’s deal takes up just 9.89 percent of the salary cap at its start. That’s not to say his previous deals weren’t bargains, though. The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn estimates Crosby has left roughly $43M on the table throughout his career by taking deals lower than market value.
Assuming a $92M salary cap for 2025-26, the Pens have $23.3M in projected cap space for next season with seven open roster spots, per PuckPedia. They only have one notable pending RFA, fresh trade pickup Cody Glass. But there’s a decent slate of pending UFAs on Pittsburgh’s books, headlined by defenseman Marcus Pettersson. Those extension talks are expected to shift into high gear with Crosby’s deal becoming official.
Crosby sits 21st in league history in goals (592), 14th in assists (1,004), 10th in points (1,596), and eighth in points per game (1.25) among players with at least 500 appearances. The latter is the most telling stat, with concussions costing ’Sid The Kid’ a good chunk of his prime in the early 2010s. He was rightfully named among the 100 greatest players in NHL history during the league’s centennial celebration in 2017.
The Penguins have missed the playoffs in back-to-back seasons, their first time outside the playoff picture since Crosby’s rookie season in 2006. Both sides hope Crosby’s discount deal helps them return to form.