Crosby Signs Extension

What would you do with 43.5 million dollars? And a better question would be: Is that not the most kick ass picture of Crosby ever taken?

I wasn't that concerned with the Crosby negotiations as I have come to understand the character runs deep enough with him. Perhaps the city had an affect on him or maybe it was the "Jiminy Cricket" named Mario on his shoulder all this time. Crosby is now fully immersed within the Pittsburgh community and the idea that he belongs in a Penguins uniform is creeping in to a reality that perhaps there still are a few franchise players left in the new NHL.

To put this into a better perspective, any Pittsburgher goes to columnist Gene Collier to slap around satire and straight faced humor. Often he has appeared as a guest on FSN-Pittsburgh and editorialized himself into legendary status.

"Like the mere mortals who skate with him in the modern NHL, Crosby was entitled to a maximum salary equal to 20 percent of the salary cap, or $10.06 million. That he settled for $1,360,000 less per season might not look like much of a break to fans who note that Howard Baldwin used to spend more on lunch for the second unit of "Sudden Death."

That puts things into better perspective on the sacrifice that Crosby has made for his team. He well deserves about as much money as the league will make from him. Ray Shero admitted that he was even preparing himself to make such an offer.

Any [financial] projections I'd done had Sidney at the max, because you never know what was going to happen," Shero said. "Sidney is interested in winning the Stanley Cup. He's interested in winning in Pittsburgh. This is a great first step, obviously."

The contract is set up so that in time, the salary cap will look a lot different. Maybe there will be even more room for the Penguins to play around with numbers. And we all know now how much Crosby has an attachment to numbers.

It works out that once the entry level contract expires, Crosby will make 8.7 million dollars a season.

Clever.

[Via: Gene Collier & Pittsburgh Post Gazette]