At this point in his career, we have an awful lot of data on Sidney Crosby.

He's played 666 games to this point in his career, and was only occasionally slowed by various injuries. He nonetheless has 884 points in those 666 games, a mark that is tops among active players by a decent shout (0.15 points per game more than second-place teammate Evgeni Malkin), and fifth all-time behind only Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Mike Bossy and Bobby Orr.

The fact that he has played a decent-sized chunk of his career in the second Dead Puck Era is frankly incredible.

However, as awed as we are — and should be — by what Crosby has accomplished in such a short time, there is the inescapable fact that he is clearly slowing down. Like all players, time comes for your skills at some point, and Crosby having been banged up for some of his prime scoring years hasn't gotten any favors from his body or opponents.

Not that he should expect any from the latter.

It's very clear at this point that Crosby, at 28, isn't likely to be the guaranteed-100-a-year points producer he once was. Last year was the first of his career in which his points-per-game pace didn't guarantee that he'd break 100. It was only about 89.4, the lowest since 103.3 his rookie year. And this year, it's down to just 64.8. So the question is, what's happened to Crosby, and is it reversible?

Age, of course, is not. But in the 11 games since Mike Johnston was mercifully dismissed as the Penguins coach, Crosby is at least starting to resemble his old self. In those 11, he's on 6-6-12, but all those points have been in the last nine games.

Perhaps you say it took him a game or two to get up to speed with what Mike Sullivan was trying to do. Perhaps you say it's a product of his overall shooting percentage for the year to that point literally doubling in the last three-plus weeks. But there's reason to wonder if whatever Mike Johnston's systems asked of Pittsburgh's players was necessarily depressive when it came to creating offense. Because one thing no one talked about is that Evgeni Malkin didn't score a ton last year — less than Crosby, in fact — and is doing very well this year but that's arguably because he's got Phil Kessel on his wing.

Here's Crosby's 5-on-5 point production for his entire career, including playoffs, with the years he played under Johnston shaded red. You'll notice that even before Johnston was hired — so we're talking the waning days of Dan Bylsma — there was a steep decline in assist production, and a slightly less-steep one in goalscoring.

That rectified itself right before Bylsma's time behind the bench at CONSOL came to an end, but started declining once again as Johnston's time wore on.

View photos NHL More

That's obviously reflected in the overall points numbers, but what's important here is the understanding that Crosby has always been a top-line player (basically 2.0 points per 60 is the cutoff there, and he has dipped below that maybe two or three times in his career), but that he used to be mega-dominant. Look at those stretches of 3.5 points per 60 at full-strength. There are a number of them, and it's absolutely absurd that anyone could do it reliably. Such is Crosby's skill level.

You of course do not pay Sidney Crosby to be a top-line forward, though. He's not a top-90 forward, or a top-30 center. He's a top-2 player regardless of position, and basically was for every second of his career before the team appeared to quit on Bylsma.

Story continues