Crosby has wrist surgery, expected to miss start of season for Penguins

Sidney Crosby is not expected to be ready for the start of the regular season after the Pittsburgh Penguins captain had surgery on his left wrist Wednesday.

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."

Malkin was injured March 16 against the Boston Bruins. He missed the final six weeks of the season (23 games) and Games 1 and 2 of the Stanley Cup First Round against the New York Islanders after scoring 28 points (eight goals, 20 assists) in 33 games.
Crosby was 10th in the NHL last season with 62 points (24 goals, 38 assists) in 55 regular-season games and a finalist for the Ted Lindsay Award, given annually to the most outstanding player in the NHL. Edmonton Oilers center Connor McDavid was voted the winner by members of the NHL Players' Association.
"We're not going to replace Sid and 'Geno,' obviously. So we'll need different guys to step up on any given night and we're going to have to play a hard brand of hockey … There's going to be opportunity for players like Evan Rodrigues and
[Radim] Zohorna
, and
[Michael] Chaput
,
[Dominik] Simon
. Bringing
Brian Boyle
to camp here (on a professional tryout contract). So there's going to be some opportunity that probably wouldn't be there in a normal circumstance. So hopefully those guys will seize the opportunity."
Crosby is a three-time Stanley Cup champion (2009, 2016, 2017) and has twice won the Hart Trophy voted as the NHL most valuable player (2007, 2014).
The Penguins (37-16-3) finished first in the eight-team MassMutual Division last season but were eliminated by the Islanders in the first round in six games.
NHL.com independent correspondent Wes Crosby contributed to this report