Can Sidney Crosby Break Out of Even-Strength Scoring Slump in Game 7?

The Pittsburgh Penguins have won three games in the third round of the playoffs. Sidney Crosby has the game-winner in each of those contests, including in the Game 6 matchup that kept the Pens alive in the series.

In that context, it may seem silly to critique Crosby’s playoff performance. However, Pittsburgh’s captain has shown time and again that he has even more to offer, especially in five-on-five situations. So far the Penguins have managed to win without their best player being the dominant force he can be in every single shift of the game.

Crosby, who in 11 NHL seasons has never scored at less than a one-point-per-game pace, is running at nearly that level right now, with 15 points in 17 games. Superficially, those are mildly disappointing numbers for the superstar centre, but they don’t explain the situation, which is that for most of the playoffs Crosby has essentially been a power-play specialist when it comes to scoring.

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At even strength, Crosby has three goals in the playoffs. That’s one more than Eric Fehr, the same number as Bryan Rust and one fewer than Matt Cullen; it's a figure that puts Crosby in a three-way tie for fifth on his own team.

Playmaking, an area where Crosby typically excels, has been even more of an issue. He has three assists at even strength in the playoffs, the same total as Trevor Daley, Olli Maatta and, again, Rust. Crosby sits in a six-way tie for ninth place on his own team when it comes to even-strength assists. He has no even-strength assists in his last eight games and just one since the end of the first round.

These low point totals are compounded by the fact that no Penguins forward gets more even-strength ice time than Crosby does. He’s averaging 16:09 per game through the postseason, more than most of the team’s defencemen and over two minutes more than the next-closest Pittsburgh forward.  

Thus, when we break down five-on-five scoring into a rate statistic—points/hour or points/minute—we find that Crosby ranks 11th among his team’s 12 most-used forwards. He’s just barely better clear of 12th-ranked Eric Fehr, and his scoring clip is 30 percent lower than that of 10th-ranked Tom Kuhnhackl.

There are, however, two encouraging signs worth noting.

The first is that while Crosby hasn’t been scoring, in many other ways his team has done well when he’s been on the ice at five-on-five.

In an average hour of postseason play, Crosby’s Penguins have held a 36-30 edge on the shot clock with him on the ice. Even on a good team that’s a strong number; with Crosby on the bench, Pittsburgh’s advantage falls to 34-31. Presented that way, it seems like a small gap, but in fact it’s a large one. Shot differential doubles from plus-three per hour up to plus-six.

No team in the league wants to give Crosby that kind of territorial advantage because over the long haul, there isn’t much doubt as to what the result will be. Even against a strong defensive system, Crosby is such a talented offensive player that dominance on the shot clock is eventually going to turn into dominance on the scoreboard.

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It isn’t like this is unprecedented, after all. Jonathan Toews is one of the few players good enough to be compared to Crosby directly, and as the captain of three different Stanley Cup-winning editions of the Blackhawks, it’s difficult to criticize his playoff credentials. However, he was held to just a single goal—and that on the power play—through the first three rounds of the 2013 playoffs. The underlying numbers were good all down the line, but the offence just wasn’t there.

He scored twice and added three assists in the final three games of the playoffs that year. Each of those games was a Chicago win, as the Blackhawks knocked off Boston in the Stanley Cup Final.

Crosby could be primed for a similar breakout, which takes us to our second encouraging point: There are already signs that he’s coming out of his slump.

It’s true, as noted above, that Crosby has just a single even-strength assist since the end of the first round, but for a long time the picture in the goals department was even uglier. Crosby scored an even-strength goal in the first game of the playoffs; however, his next wouldn’t come until Game 2 against Tampa Bay.

That's an 11-game drought.

In Game 6, Crosby made sure he didn't repeat that dry spell, blowing past Anton Stralman and Victor Hedman for his second even-strength marker of the series:

“When Sid’s playing that way, I think it certainly gives our bench a big lift,” coach Mike Sullivan told Postmedia's Mike Zeisberger (via the National Post) after the game, which was also the first since the opening round in which Crosby recorded two points in the same contest.

Zeisberger concluded that the challenge for Tampa Bay in Game 7 would be to contain Crosby, who seemed “to be on a mission.” He wasn’t the only one singing the praises of the Pittsburgh centre. The Associated Press’ Will Graves (h/t TheStar.com) ran a story under the headline “Sidney Crosby willing Pittsburgh Penguins toward Cup final,” and Yahoo’s Greg Wyshynski argued that his Game 6 performance “answered questions” and silenced critics.

Perhaps most telling is Crosby’s personal shot count. He has 20 shots in the last five games after firing just 28 in his first dozen postseason contests.

Tampa Bay, as Zeisberger suggests, will do everything it can to prevent Crosby from having a breakout performance at five-on-five in Game 7; if the Lightning can succeed, it will go a long way toward guaranteeing them a berth in the Stanley Cup Final. But if Crosby breaks out in a way he hasn’t since Round 1, he’ll likely lead his team to a fourth-round matchup against the San Jose Sharks.

Statistics courtesy of Hockey Reference and Corsica Hockey. 

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work.