Sidney Crosby just joined Pirates icon with historic 2024 season debut
This is Yinzer royalty.
Pittsburgh Penguins center Sidney Crosby has long been considered a living legend, and he further added to that legacy this week with his 2024-25 NHL season debut.
Skating in his 20th season with the Penguins, Crosby has now joined Pittsburgh Pirates legend Willie Stargell as the only other athlete to spend two decades with a team in the Steel City.
It's an impressive achievement in its own right, but even more so in a city with such a rich professional sports history that includes six Super Bowl championships, five Stanley Cup wins and five World Series titles.
(It should come as a surprise to no one that the Pirates have had the longest championship drought of the three teams, with their last World Series title coming in 1979.)
Crosby captained the Penguins to three of their five Stanley Cup championships (2009, 2016 and 2017). Still affectionately known as "Sid the Kid," even at age 37, he remains front and center as one of the most iconic figures in today's NHL. He is eight goals shy of 600 in his career and just two points shy of 1,600 in fewer than 1,300 career games, and he's not showing any signs of slowing down anytime soon.
Penguins' Sidney Crosby joins Pirates' Willie Stargell in reaching historic Pittsburgh sports milestone
In Stargell, Crosby joins elite company in Pittsburgh sports history. A seven-time MLB All-Star and two-time World Series champion with the Pirates, Stargell is one of the most revered figures in franchise history. He was the National League MVP and World Series MVP in 1979 and a first-ballot Hall of Famer in 1988. There is a larger-than-life statue of him outside PNC Park, which happened to be unveiled just two days before his death in 2001.
Stargell's two decades with the Pirates came from 1962-1982, and the team retired his No. 8 on Sept. 6, 1982. It feels safe to assume that Crosby is also bound for the Hockey Hall of Fame and that we will one day see his No. 87 hanging from the rafters at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh.
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