A 1-0 overtime loss to the Philadelphia Flyers in Game 6 of a first-round series Wednesday night might have been the end of a championship era in Pittsburgh Penguins hockey.<\/p>\n
Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang have played together for 20 seasons, establishing themselves, with three Stanley Cup titles and countless individual honors, as one of the most decorated and tenured trios in NHL history.<\/p>\n
But Malkin\u2019s contract is expiring, and the topic of general manager Kyle Dubas\u2019 willingness to give him another deal has been discussed over and over, without resolution, throughout the season.<\/p>\n
In the moments after Flyers defenseman Cam York\u2019s overtime goal ended the Penguins\u2019 season, Crosby shared his thoughts on the matter.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s probably hard to put into words, honestly,\u201d Crosby said. \u201cIt\u2019s something that we probably have just gotten used to. But I think they\u2019re like family. I think that\u2019s the best way to describe it. We\u2019ve had some great wins, some tough losses like this. Ultimately, though, that\u2019s a long time that we\u2019ve played together. Just so appreciative for the opportunity to be able to play with them as long as we have.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully we can keep it going.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dan Muse has only coached the trio for one season, but he spoke passionately about their impact on the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see it from afar and you hear how people talk about all three of these guys prior to being here, and then you get to see it first-hand. It\u2019s special,\u201d Muse said. \u201cTo be doing what they\u2019ve been doing for this long, at such a high level, just continuing to be able to elevate their games, especially when things get hard and it\u2019s late in the seaosn, whether it\u2019s fighting to clinch a playoff spot or when your team needs to dig out of a hole during the regular season or in the playoffs, they just continue to elevate and find different levels.<\/p>\n
\u201cI honestly don\u2019t think the three of them get enough credit for the fact that they\u2019ve been doing it together for this long. It hasn\u2019t happened before in sports in North America, and there\u2019s a reason for it. Because it\u2019s ridiculously hard, and it\u2019s so uncommon, and it takes special people to be able to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 1-0 overtime loss to the Philadelphia Flyers in Game 6 of a first-round series Wednesday night might…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-640454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}