Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and the end of the road for the Penguins’ Big 3

It was a beautiful day in Anaheim four months ago and the Penguins had just completed their practice at Honda Center. Outside, on a sun-splashed California afternoon, stood Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang. They were quietly studying their phones while standing together beside the team bus, considering some dinner plans, looking more like aristocrats than hockey players.

Of course, they are hockey royalty. Penguins royalty, especially. Three Stanley Cups, a combined 3,605 points and 15 years’ worth of memories speak for themselves.

Fifteen years, though, is a very long time for a hockey royal family to remain. Those three can have dinner together as much as they’d like in the future, but how many dinners remain with the trio wearing black and gold?

A very real chance exists that Crosby, Malkin and Letang are playing their final postseason together starting Tuesday at Madison Square Garden in a showdown with the Rangers. The Big Three isn’t all that interested in discussing the future, even if all three are very well aware of reality.

“You just try to enjoy it as much as you can,” Crosby said. “Because you know it’s not something that’s going to last forever.”

Crosby still has three years remaining on his contract. His longtime running mates, Malkin and Letang, are scheduled to become unrestricted free agents this summer.

General manager Ron Hextall has discussed a new contract with representatives for Malkin and Letang and, while the conversations were cordial, an agreement isn’t close with either player. In two months, Malkin and Letang will be free to sign elsewhere if no agreement is reached with Hextall.

Malkin’s representatives have told the Penguins that the future Hall of Famer is willing to play for less than the $9.5 million he’s earned annually for the better part of the past decade. In January, Malkin even joked, “I’m a really rich guy,” explaining that he doesn’t require a super-deal to return to Pittsburgh.

He also remains a point-per-game player and a box office attraction who doesn’t wish to be low-balled.

Letang, meanwhile, just set a career high with 68 points during the 2021-22 season. The current NHL landscape pays defensemen more lucrative salaries than ever before. Especially right-handed defensemen. Especially offensively-gifted defensemen. Making matters even more daunting for the Penguins is that Kent Hughes, Letang’s longtime agent, is now the general manager of the Montreal Canadiens. Letang is from Montreal and is very proud of his French heritage. At 35, his performance remains at a high level and he’s not interested in taking any pay cuts.

“We’ll see,” Brian Burke, the Penguins’ president of hockey operations, recently told The Athletic. “We’ve had discussions. We’ve made some progress. But we are not in a rush.”

It’s been a different season for all three of the Penguins’ stars.

With Crosby, Malkin and Letang under contract, the Penguins have won 20 postseason series during the past 15 years. They’ve been the most winning regular season and postseason team in the NHL during that stretch.

They’ve also lost four consecutive series, starting in 2018 when the Capitals finally slayed their nemesis while subsequently ending the Penguins’ three-peat bid.

Once known for their youth, explosive talent and precociousness, the Penguins are the old men in this postseason. Crosby, Malkin and Letang now routinely are asked about things like “playoff experience,” which is a more polite way of asking a player if he’s too old to win another championship.

“The playoffs are a different animal,” Letang said. “The intensity is way higher.”

The Big Three would know. The Penguins didn’t make the playoffs during Crosby’s rookie season. Then, along came Malkin and Letang, and they haven’t missed the playoffs since.

Typically, the Penguins are the favorites, but not anymore. Not after losing four straight series. And not after the slumber they were in during the past month of the regular season.

Playing the red-hot Rangers in the first round makes matters even trickier.

Three teams — the Rangers, Islanders and the Canadiens — have eliminated the Penguins from the postseason twice during the era of the Big Three. The Rangers can become the first team to beat them three times in a series and perhaps the team that ends an era.

“People have been talking about it for the last three years,” Letang said of the possibility that either he or Malkin — or both — will move on after this season. “We all know about it. We don’t have to discuss it. We know what it is.”

There is a hint of resignation in Letang’s tone, as though perhaps he knows something that everyone else doesn’t.

“We have to erase everything we did against them (the Rangers) all year and show our true selves,” he said. “I’ve been around a long time. When you have that core group, you have confidence in what you can bring. If we’re underdogs, fine. That’s all right. I trust the guys I have around me.”

Trust is built over time, and these three have been together for half of their respective lifetimes.

“We just look at it as an opportunity to solidify what we did throughout our careers in Pittsburgh,” Letang said. “Keep it going. That’s our focus. That’s what we talk about. Winning another one.”

The puck drops at 7 p.m. on Tuesday in the world’s most famous arena, which would be a fitting stage for the end of an era, or for another chapter of brilliance in the glory days of Penguins hockey.

“They’re really good,” Letang said. “I think we are, too. We want to prove that we still belong in the dance.”

Even if it is the last one.

(Photo: Jeanine Leech / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)