Doing 'whatever it takes,' Crosby literally takes down Wings

... but I'd never seen him wrestle until this:

Oh, man, the crowd loved that. Should've heard the 18,441 on hand erupt, as if Sid had taken a folding chair to Detroit defenseman Ben Chiarot.

Almost as much they loved the Penguins surging back into Stanley Cup playoff position by outlasting the right-in-the-race-too Red Wings, 6-5 in overtime, with three equally gargantuan games to go.

"This is fun," Sid would say. "This a fun time of year, and this was a big game. Big two points."

Right. Those two points:

That's complete control, tiebreakers and all. Win and they're in.

But hey, to answer the captain's question, yeah, if I'm a PIAA ref and this was on the mat between, oh, McGuffey and Jefferson-Morgan, I'm absolutely giving the two for the takedown.

"He's fired up to lead this team," Bryan Rust would say of this sequence, midway through the second period. "You can see he's very emotionally invested. He's in there playing his heart out, and I think everybody in here has taken notice of that. We're all trying to do the same."

They are, actually. On the very next shift, as if for some sweet symmetry, the other two members of the Core came through with their own physicality, first with Evgeni Malkin catching Patrick Kane looking a little too casual at center red ...

... then with Kris Letang turning a routine forecheck into a forearm shiver to the grill of Shayne Gostisbehere:

The citizens soaked those up, as well.

It started with Sid. It always starts with Sid. And even though I wrote on this same subject yesterday, I'm back for more because he's always back for more, particularly at this time of year: His goal and two assists in this game have him at 20 points through the Penguins' 7-0-3 streak that began March 24. And it's anything but a coincidence that his point total's the highest in the NHL in that span, and the same applies to his team's point total. Those figures have been inexorably linked for two full decades now.

And all of this, it's worth stressing, has come after the trading of the best left winger he'd ever had in Jake Guentzel.

Still, it's not so much the what but the how.

Watch Sid's maneuver behind the Detroit net to begin setting up what'd be his own goal:

Took Dylan Larkin to school.

"You just try to be instinctive out there," he'd say with trademark humility. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. There's times where I do it, and it hits the guy's skate or I don't get it clean, and I don't talk about it, right?"

Yeah, no. He's done this a ton. Never gets old. 

Kinda like Sid himself:

Rust does the heavy lifting here with an elegant 40-foot saucer, but Sid's dictating the flow by bursting late across the blue line with back-door designs from the first stride. Old friend David Perron realizes this, but not in time and not with enough of a burst to keep up.

"That was a beautiful pass," Sid would say. "I was trying to stop because I wasn't sure if he'd just put in on net, but he put right in my tape through at least two or three guys. He threaded the needle on that one."

Naturally, Sid would set the grandest stage:

And he had a bigger role than it might appear on Erik Karlsson's epic blast, as Rickard Rakell, the other skate on the ice, explained to me, saying, "I had the first chance after Karl got it to me, but after their goalie made the save, Sid's the one who made sure we kept possession."

Uh-huh. That's Sid out-thinking and out-muscling J.T. Compher just to the left of Alex Lyon's net. It's from there that Sid's able to dish to Karlsson.

Sid's analysis of this one?

"Great goal."

Meaning Karlsson's portion of the effort. Some stuff never changes.

Neither does this: Sid keeps climbing every conceivable ladder this league has. 

The assist on the winner was the 1,000th of his career:

“It's probably apropos that it's an overtime goal that he gets the assist on,” Mike Sullivan would say. “I think this one's a huge milestone. There’s not too many guys who get 1,000 assists.”

Nope. Sid's just the 14th, as well as the seventh-fastest, achieving it in 1,269 games.

"It's a great honor," he'd say.

Hardly to be overlooked, his three points moved him onto the NHL's all-time top 10 points list, overtaking Phil Esposito:

He's the NHL's first player to break into that top 10 since Jaromir Jagr did so Jan. 19, 2008.

“Think about that for a second,” Sullivan said. “It puts him in really elite company. The milestones he's achieving now, they're self-explanatory.”

Here again, Sid took the humble route, even when asked about approaching Mario Lemieux after he'd pass Joe Sakic, saying, “Yeah, that’s cool. I mean, I couldn’t have told you that. I haven’t looked that closely at it. But to be in that company with all those players, that means a lot. I grew up watching those players that you named. I’m obviously a big fan of the game and the history. So yeah, it’s something that I’m honored to be part of.”

At the moment, his teammates understandably seem more focused on Sid from the standpoint of what's at hand.

"It's been it's been a heck of a ride playing with him for as long as I have," Rust would say. "He's a special player, but an even more special person. He's awesome. And he's leading this team right now. I think we're all just kind of getting in line behind him and trying to do everything we can."

“These last couple weeks, watching him play, he’s a man on a mission,” Alex Nedeljkovic would say. “It’s not very surprising. He does it every day. He comes into the rink every day, and treats his body well, and just cares so much and wants to win. Anything short of winning, it’s not acceptable."

Neither's a wrestling takedown in most non-wrestling environments but, as Sid would offer with a shrug when I asked how that even happened, "Hey, whatever it takes."

Yep. He's carrying the team.

Carrying the other team at times, too.

• I've got a bonus Drive to the Net on the Karlsson goal ... and various other misadventures that preceded it.

• Thanks for reading.

• And for listening: