Pittsburgh Penguins star Sidney Crosby will miss six to eight weeks with a high ankle sprain, the team announced Tuesday.
Crosby, who garnered the most votes from fans for the NHL All-Star game, will also miss the game Sunday in Atlanta.
Crosby, second in the NHL in scoring, injured his right ankle Friday during the Penguins' 3-0 loss to Tampa Bay. If he takes eight weeks to heal - and the recovery time for such an injury can vary greatly – he would return in mid-March, with only about three weeks of the schedule remaining.
"I was hoping three to four weeks would be the most," Crosby said Tuesday, adding he must be careful not to rush back and "tweak it a lot, and then we're back to square one. ... Right now, it's all about healing."
Team physician Charles Burke confirmed the injury was a high ankle sprain, but Crosby said there was no bone damage, which would have meant an even longer layoff.
Entering Tuesday's play, the Penguins have a one-point lead over the Philadelphia Flyers and New Jersey Devils in the tight Atlantic Division standings.
Crosby, last year's scoring champion and league MVP, again was battling for top honors with 20 goals and a league-best 43 assists. He is tied with Atlanta's Ilya Kovalchuk and Calgary's Jarome Iginla one point behind Tampa Bay Lightning's Vincent Lecavalier for the league lead this year."It hasn't sunk in yet," the 20-year-old Crosby said of the injury, the worst he's had since he began his hockey career. "It's going to be mentally tough as we go along (and he can't play)."
The Penguins already are playing without Gary Roberts (broken leg), Marc-Andre Fleury (ankle), Colby Armstrong (hip) and Adam Hall (groin).
Fleury has been out since Dec. 6 with a high ankle sprain and is not yet ready to return. When Fleury was hurt, it was estimated he would return in six to eight weeks, the same prognosis given Crosby.
While the Penguins lead the Atlantic, they are likely to slip out of that without Crosby. In the race for a top 8 finish for a playoff spot, they have an eight-point lead currently on the ninth-place New York Rangers and a nine-point lead over the 10th-place Thrashers and Capitals.
The Penguins are 10-1-2 in their last 13 games despite losing 6-5 in a shootout against Washington on Monday night.
Crosby figures to miss at least the next 13 games if he can come back in a month, 22 if it's six weeks.
The Pens will now rely heavily on Evgeni Malkin, who scored twice and added an assist in Monday's loss. He now has 15 goals in his past 15 games and ranks 9th (entering Tuesday) in the NHL with 56 points.
"We lost our best player, Crosby, you can't replace him, not just me," Malkin said. "(We need) all four lines if possible every game. We have to play our best every game."
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