Take one good look on how the Edmonton Oilers are doing as a franchise right now. They have Connor McDavid, the best young player in the league, and yet have only made the playoffs once in his tenure. They have a familiar roster to what the Pittsburgh Penguins had in the early 2000s.

So why haven’t the Oilers made the Stanley Cup Playoffs as frequent as the Penguins have? They have no wingers for Connor McDavid.

Sidney Crosby is the most decorated hockey player in the NHL and still arguably the best. However, if you were to ask him how he got this far in his career, he would likely say something along the lines of how he owes it all to his teammates.

This may seem like a generic answer but it’s true. Crosby can’t do it all by himself or else we would have a one-man team. With the Penguins roster constantly shaking up and new faces becoming his teammates, I took a look back at some of Crosby’s line mates over the years. Let’s see which ones were busts and which ones were essentially to becoming Stanley Cup Champions.

Didn’t Quite Make the List

• Lee Stempniak
• Brendan Morrow
• Ruslan Fedetenko
• Erik Christensen
• Tyler Kennedy
• Steve Downie
• Daniel Sprong
• Dominik Simon
• Jared McCann
• Matt Cullen.

Didn’t Work Out

Evgeni Malkin

Let’s start off with the biggest name here. There isn’t really much to say about the experiment that was Crosby and Malkin on the same line. Mike Sullivan tried this when the Derick Brassard trade happened to try and give Brassard more ice time. The result was an out of position Malkin who played even worse defensively, which quickly got Sullivan to put him back. The two-headed monster name is now only really true on the power play.

Phil Kessel

Kessel worked in Pittsburgh, he just never worked on Crosby’s wing. When the initial trade came that sent Phil Kessel to Pittsburgh, people were predicting outrageous numbers saying that the duo would each score 50 goals and 100 points every year. This obviously didn’t happen, but Kessel did go on to have three consecutive 70-plus point seasons with centers such as Evgeni Malkin, Nick Bonino and even Riley Sheahan. He also is a two-time Stanley Cup Champion.

Marian Hossa

Hossa is one of the players with the smallest sample size of games. He played more games for the Penguins in the playoffs than in the regular season. However, the Penguins made a huge trade to acquire Hossa from the Atlanta Thrashers in 2008 before going on to reach the Stanley Cup Final. We all know the rest of the story; the Penguins lost to the Red Wings with Hossa and then the next year beat Hossa on the final, as he signed with the Red Wings. His chemistry with Crosby was good, but Hossa decided to leave.

James Neal

Neal and Malkin were a fantastic combination that couldn’t be stopped. Neal and Crosby were the exact opposite of this and in the brief spurts that the two spent together nothing truly special happened. Breaking up Neal and Malkin was a bad idea in the first place as Neal scored 40 goals with Malkin. Crosby at the time was better served with players such as Chris Kunitz and Pascal Dupuis at the time.

David Perron

Like Hossa, Perron is another accomplished player who had a short time spent with the Penguins. Injury troubles caused Perron only play 86 games over his two-year span with the Penguins and he never really fit in. However, what’s worse is that the Penguins traded the 15th overall pick to get Perron, and that pick ended up becoming Mat Barzal. In January 2016, David Perron was traded to the Anaheim Ducks in exchange for the next player on this list.

Carl Hagelin

Both Ray Shero and Jim Rutherford believed that they key to a perfect line mate for Crosby would be an accomplished speedy forward. The Penguins got that in Carl Hagelin. However, Hagelin never played with Crosby like people had hoped for him. He was moved up and down the lineup playing on every forward line until he finally found a home with the Hagelin, Bonino, Kessel “HBK” line, and the rest is history.

Beau Bennett

Jake Guentzel is what Beau Bennett was supposed to be, a young Penguin draftee that rose up through the system. He had great skill, speed, hockey sense and performed well on Crosby’s wing. However, the only problem was that Bennett was more fragile than Kris Letang. You probably didn’t even realize that he was technically on the Stanley Cup team in 2016 but didn’t play because he was hurt.

One’s that you Forgot About

Jarome Iginla

The man that assisted on Crosby’s greatest goal of all time sadly didn’t have the same amount of success with him in the NHL. This was the year that the Penguins geared up at the trade deadline and got Iginla. The result was an Eastern Conference Finals appearance that ended in a sweep by the Boston Bruins. Iginla went on to play for the Bruins, Avalanche and Kings before retiring.

Derick Brassard

As mentioned earlier, Sullivan really liked the idea of giving Brassard more ice time. He liked it much so he would do crazy things such as moving Brassard to Crosby’s wing. Long story short, there was absolutely no chemistry and the Brassard trade as a whole looks worse each and every day. Right now, he’s still just sitting out there in free agency currently.

Brian Gibbons

The player that inspired me to write this article is Brian Gibbons and how unexpectedly great his short time with Crosby was. Gibbons only had a brief time to shine with Crosby. As a rookie, Gibbons scored 17 points in less than half a season as well as having three playoff points in eight games.

Blake Comeau

Comeau only played one year with the Penguins and spent most of his time with Malkin. However, he still found some time with Crosby. He scored 31 points in 61 games with the Penguins in a year that I like to call the “forgotten year.” This was when the Penguins included players such as Comeau, Christian Ehrhoff and Steve Downie.

Part II out Tomorrow!

PHOTO: Pittsburgh Penguins center Sidney Crosby, left, celebrates his goal with right wing Pascal Dupuis against the Montreal Canadiens in Pittsburgh Tuesday, March 26, 2013. Photo courtesy of Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press.

The post Penguins: Analyzing Sidney Crosby’s wingers over the years — Part I appeared first on Pittsburgh Sports Castle.