Sidney Crosby and the not-so-elusive three-point game

It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Pittsburgh Penguins have a tendency to win when Sidney Crosby gets at least three points on the night. That’s at least three goals; a fair amount of the time, that should be enough for a win, especially when you have a team as good as the Penguins in general.

What might come as a surprise is just how often Crosby has these three-point games, and just how good the Penguins’ record is even with the sheer number they have. Via the Elias Sports Bureau:

Pittsburgh has a 106-6-1 record in regular-season games in which Crosby produced at least three points, and the Penguins are 52-1-0 in his last 53 such games.

Throughout his entire career - which, mind, is 725 games - Crosby has scored three points (or more!) in 113 of them. That’s 16% of his career.

That hammers home how he’s a 1.3 point-per-game career player, but it’s still nuts to reevaluate those numbers again to remember what they really mean.

Crosby is really, really, really good.

Also: that was already Crosby’s second three-point game of the season. He’s tied for fifth in league-wide scoring, though he’s still a number of games behind all of the other top guys.