The Pittsburgh Penguins 2015-16 season ended in triumph, but before the peak, the team was stuck in a deep valley.
Sidney Crosby, himself, wasn't immune to struggling, enduring the worst offensive slump of his career from October until December - leading many around the NHL to predict his demise.
In a self-written article posted to SportsIllustrated.com Thursday, the Penguins captain revealed his emotions from the roller coaster campaign.
From the article:
Almost a quarter of the way through the 2015–16 season, I only had a handful of points and wherever I was on the list of NHL scoring leaders, it wasn’t high. I wasn’t playing up to my expectations, but even worse, my failures meant that the team wasn’t winning. Nothing we did seemed to work. Offensively we struggled and with each frustrating loss, we fell further and further behind the competition.
Crosby went on to say that it became frustrating wondering why he and his team were stuck in an offensive rut for so long, and continuing to answer the same questions about it game after game.
The Penguins turnaround started with the hiring of Mike Sullivan, who replaced Mike Johnston behind the bench.
Once that happened, everything clicked.
Eventually, the hundreds of hours we put in as a team at practice as a team paid dividends. By dedicating ourselves to preparation and development before games, we were able to play instinctively in games, confident - certain, actually - that our hard work would pay off.
After notching a second Stanley Cup and a brief period of offseason rest, Crosby says it's his mission to ensure the low-points of last season don't reoccur.
I won’t rest on my laurels. I just can’t. Winning is special. If last season taught me anything, it was how thin the line is between being 'washed up' and lifting the Stanley Cup. I don’t want to struggle like that again. That October to December stretch was awful; the lowest point of my career outside of injury. I’ll put in any amount of work I have to so I don’t have to go through that again.
The article can be read in its entirety here.
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