The 34-year-old center will be sidelined at least six weeks.
The Penguins open the season at the Tampa Bay Lightning on Oct. 12. A six-week recovery for Crosby would have him miss the first four games and return Oct. 23 against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Crosby had surgery on the same wrist last offseason.
"Sid's been dealing with this for numerous years now," Pittsburgh general manager Ron Hextall said. "So at the end of the year, you let the body heal. Test things out. There's just a process that takes weeks to figure out where the wrist is at, whether he can get through another year. Some point, you wrap things up along the process, along the way. The conclusion that we came to was that this procedure was the best way to proceed. I think we all, including Sid, wish we had known this a month or two months ago. It would've been great. But we are where we are, and I think on the positive side, we have four weeks until we play a regular-season game."
Center Evgeni Malkin will be unavailable for training camp following surgery on his right knee in June and could also be sidelined for the start of the season. Hextall did not have a time frame for the 35-year-old's return.
"We'll get to that once we get around training camp there and he sees the doc," Hextall said. "We'll have a better idea where he's at, at that point."
