Sidney Crosby understands trade talk amid Pens’ playoff drought

Sidney Crosby is well aware of the trade talk swirling around him, now that he and the Pittsburgh Penguins have gone three seasons without making the playoffs.

Going into another at age 38 with little realistic hope of the team contending, the three-time Stanley Cup champion acknowledged the rumors are now part of his reality, even if he’d rather they not be.

“I understand it,” Crosby said Monday night at the NHL player media tour on the Las Vegas Strip. “That’s the hard part about losing. Everybody thinks that the losing is the buzzer goes [off], you lose a game and that sucks, but there’s so much more than that. It’s the turnover. It’s the unknown, the uncertainty, the question marks. That’s the stuff that’s tough.”

A year ago, Crosby signed an extension that keeps him under contract through the 2026-27 season with the only professional organization he has ever known. It came with a team-friendly $8.7 million salary cap hit — the same he has had through 2008 and a nod to his jersey No. 87 — and provides room to build around the face of the franchise.

Instead, the Penguins look to be in rebuilding mode. They sold at the trade deadline in March, and veterans ranging from Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell to Erik Karlsson have been speculated as trade candidates even more realistically than Crosby.

“It hasn’t changed my approach,” Crosby said. “I still go out there trying to win every single game and try to be the best that I can be, and I think that youth and having that energy around you isn’t a bad thing either. We’ve got a lot of hungry guys, a lot of competition for spots. I think you just try to find different things that you can feed off of and still continue to learn through it.”

Crosby has a full no-movement clause, essentially putting him in control of his future. He has been linked to Colorado, where close friend Nathan MacKinnon has the Avalanche as one of the top teams in the Western Conference, and even Montreal, especially after starring there during the 4 Nations Face-Off in February.

Growing up in Cole Harbor, Nova Scotia, Crosby was a Canadiens fan and mentioned that during the 4 Nations. So, yes, he understands why folks might think he’d want to play there for an organization on the rise in a hockey-crazed market.

“I get it, trust me,” Crosby said, recalling being in Montreal in June early in his time in the league and marveling at how broadcasts were already projecting lineups for the next training camp in September. “They’re so into it, and I get it as to why that would come up and that sort of thing. It doesn’t make it any easier when you’re losing, for sure, to hear those things, but at the same time, to know that a team like that wants you, it’s not the end of the world. It could be worse. I just think that’s part of it.”