Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby is celebrating his 38th birthday on Thursday, and for most players that would be an age where they would either be deep into retirement, contemplating retirement or going through some sort of a serious decline in both their play and their production.

Crosby, however, is not like most players.

He is doing none of those things.

There is no indication he is even contemplating retirement anytime soon.

He still has two years remaining on his contract and could still sign another one to keep playing into his 40s.

He is not only one of the best players in NHL history, he is still one of the best players in hockey right now and still performing at a level that almost nobody else ever has at this age.

It’s kind of staggering when you look at the numbers from a historical context.

He is coming off an age 37 season where he recorded 91 points, the fourth-most ever for a player in a single season age 37 or older. The only players that topped him were a 103-point season from Gordie Howe in 1968-69, a 100-point season from Joe Sakic in 2006-07 and a 93-point season from Johnny Buyck in 1972-73.

From the time Crosby turned 35, he’s already accumulated 278 total points, the fourth-most ever for a player between their age 35 and 37 seasons, trailing only Buyck, Wayne Gretzky and Jean Ratelle.

In NHL history there have only been six instances of a player topping 80 points in a season age 38 or older, and only one of them (the aforementioned Howe season with 103 points) topped more than 83 in a single season. Given the way Crosby played in 2024-25 and how dominant he still looked, I don’t think it’s a stretch to think he could not only easily top the 83-point mark (which would guarantee him yet another point-per-game season), but also make a run at the 90-point mark again and perhaps even the 100-point mark. Especially if he still has one of Rickard Rakell or Bryan Rust on his wings (or both) for the season.

To get a better historical comparison on this for an expectation, I went back through the top-15 age 37 performances (excluding Crosby) in league history and then looked at how they followed up that performance in their age 38 season.

In total, those 15 players averaged 1.05 points per game in their age 37 season.

As a group, they averaged .848 points per game in their age 38 season.

A slight — but not unexpected — decline given the fact they were all a year older.

If Crosby saw a similar decrease from age 37 to age 38 that would put him at a .932 points per game average during the 2025-26 season, which would put him on a 76-point pace.

But those are only *averages* among a small sampling of relatively comparable players. Some performed better in their age 38 season than others. Some performed significantly better than others. And some of the more recent players on the list (specifically Alex Ovechkin and Joe Pavelski) performed significantly better than others. Training, nutrition, modern equipment and every other variable that goes into a player performance all matter here. As does work ethic and drive. And not to take anything away from anybody else that has played to this age (you don’t do so without insane work ethic and drive), Crosby seems to be wired differently than even some of the best players in league history. He almost takes it as a challenge if somebody says he can’t do something to go out there and prove that he can.

It wasn’t uncommon for him to be the best player on the ice during the 2024-25 season no matter who the Penguins were playing. At some point he is going to start slowing down, and he might even slow down a little bit this season. But I am not ready to say he is going to slow down significantly. Expectations should still be high for his performance this season even if they are not high for the remainder of the team.