Sidney Crosby didn’t need a 3rd Stanley Cup to prove his greatness. He won it anyway

There wasn’t much left for Sidney Crosby to prove in the 2017 Stanley Cup Final. He had already won two of them — one as an young superstar, the other as a respected, grizzled veteran. Crosby had already proven he was one of the NHL’s all-time greats, whether you looked at the stats, the highlights, or the hardware.

On Sunday, Crosby hoisted the Stanley Cup above his head for a third time with the Penguins’ 2-0 win in Game 6. He didn’t need this to prove his place among hockey’s legends. Nobody would’ve scratched him off their Hall of Fame ballot because he couldn’t topple an impressive Predators team.

And yet, with this victory, it still felt like Crosby was silencing some of his final critics, the ones who had wondered whether even two Stanley Cups was enough to say he’d reached his potential.

Looks pretty nice:

Supporters of Jonathan Toews can no longer point to the Blackhawks captain’s superior Stanley Cup output. If the goal is to define greatness by winning, there’s no longer any reason not to put Crosby in the highest echelon. Three Stanley Cups in the salary cap era translates to roughly 10 in a six-team league with minimal player movement (math not confirmed).

People will tell you that this is a historic win for Crosby, the one that finally put him over the top. That if he had won just the two Stanley Cups, but fallen short against P.K. Subban and company, it wouldn’t be enough. That would be considered a great career, but not necessarily a transcendent one.

Except Crosby never really needed this Cup to affirm his legacy in the hockey world. He didn’t need a historic postseason where he finished with eight goals and a playoff-high 19 assists in 23 games. The resume he had built was already prepared to speak for itself.

That’s a resume featuring 382 goals and over 1,000 points in the regular season since 2005 (both second behind Alex Ovechkin), two Olympic gold medals, and countless NHL awards. If it wasn’t for the concussion issues that slowed Crosby a few years back, his track record would be even more stunning.

That’s been the conundrum with Crosby — he’s so spectacularly gifted that you hope for more from him, even when he’s skating circles around his peers. He’s always noticeable on the ice, whether he’s scoring a flashy breakaway or testing the boundaries of what he can get away with to tilt the odds in the Pens’ direction. Even with a resume that essentially nobody can match, people still wanted to compare him to others as if he had something more to prove.

But as we shower praise on Crosby for getting that third Stanley Cup, which firmly puts the Penguins among the best teams of this era, we should acknowledge how incredible it is that he’s gotten to this point. He is the mega-hyped No. 1 pick who actually lived up to the billing. It’s one of the most satisfying stories in all of sports.

Sidney Crosby is now a three-time Stanley Cup champion. In the end, that’ll be merely one of many special things he’s accomplished in hockey.