{"id":554099,"date":"2026-04-16T21:48:31","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T21:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/554099\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T21:48:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T21:48:31","slug":"sidney-crosby-and-the-pittsburgh-penguins-have-surprised-everyone-but-themselves-with-playoff-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/554099\/","title":{"rendered":"Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins have surprised everyone but themselves with playoff return"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-apitype=\"text\" data-contentid=\"6ACANLAVDBFIXFBILIBC5TPXCU\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-heFNVF wpds-c-heFNVF-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">PITTSBURGH \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/sidney-crosby\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sidney Crosby<\/a> , his face cleanly shaven for now, settled into the bench inside the <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/pittsburgh-penguins\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Pittsburgh Penguins<\/a> dressing room on Thursday and pulled a black baseball cap over his head.<\/p>\n<p data-apitype=\"text\" data-contentid=\"4L3RN7YITRD5ZP3ENPW3TORECE\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-heFNVF wpds-c-heFNVF-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">For the first time in what felt like a long time, Crosby didn\u2019t have to spend part of a mid-April afternoon cleaning out his locker and answering questions about <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/penguins-nhl-ron-hextall-2bc150f6644869e4c321637f7d6043c8\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">how another season got away<\/a> from the Penguins or wonder what might lie ahead during another uncomfortably long summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH \u2014 Sidney Crosby , his face cleanly shaven for now, settled into the bench inside the Pittsburgh&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554100,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5113],"tags":[57487,62666,5,4,57484,39240,292,57485,106,57486,2960,118,1469,100,5216,43,104],"class_list":{"0":"post-554099","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-penguins","8":"tag-2026-nhl-schedule","9":"tag-hkn-resurgent-penguins","10":"tag-hockey","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-nhl-2026-news","13":"tag-nhl-highlights","14":"tag-nhl-hockey","15":"tag-nhl-latest-news","16":"tag-nhl-news","17":"tag-nhl-schedule-2026","18":"tag-nhl-scores","19":"tag-penguins","20":"tag-pittsburgh","21":"tag-pittsburgh-penguins","22":"tag-pittsburghpenguins","23":"tag-sports","24":"tag-stanley-cup-playoffs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116416591635861995","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}