This previous week, Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby set a franchise file when he broke Mario Lemieux’s record for most assists.
On Tuesday, he set an NHL file when he received his 15,183rd face-off within the second interval of their sport in opposition to the Columbus Blue Jackets.
That makes him the NHL’s all-time face-off king, breaking a file that had beforehand been held by former Boston Bruins ahead Patrice Bergeron.
There are two issues about this file that must be mentioned.
The primary is that the NHL solely tracked face-off wins beginning with the 1997-98 season, so it’s fully doable, if unlikely, that any individual in NHL historical past has extra of them. We simply have no idea as a result of it was by no means persistently tracked. It’s sort of just like the sack file within the NFL the place it was solely an “unofficial” stat and the numbers diversified from team-to-team.
The second is that when Crosby first entered the NHL, and for the primary a part of his profession, face-offs had been extensively thought of his single largest weak point as a participant. Maybe his solely actual weak point as a participant. However he persistently dedicated himself to bettering at them and getting higher, and he did so to the purpose the place he has now received extra of them than any participant for the reason that NHL began monitoring them.
It may not be the largest file in hockey historical past, however it’s nonetheless an enormous a part of the sport.
Crosby has an opportunity to interrupt one other NHL file this season if he can keep a point-per-game common. If he does so, he’ll break a file he’s at present tied with Wayne Gretzky for many consecutive seasons with averaging a degree per sport. Crosby is at present at 19 consecutive seasons. He entered play on Tuesday simply forward of that point-per-game tempo with 42 factors within the Penguins’ first 41 video games this season.
