The Pittsburgh Penguins are right in the thick of the Eastern Conference playoff race as NHL hockey resumes on Wednesday night — but things are going to get exponentially harder without their captain.

Sidney Crosby, who was injured in Team Canada's quarterfinal victory over Team Czechia at the Winter Olympics in Milan, will miss at least a month, the team announced. He was placed on injured reserve on Wednesday.

It's a brutal blow for both Crosby, who is leading the team with 59 points in 56 games, and the Penguins, who are trying to rectify three consecutive missed postseasons.

The 38-year-old reportedly did everything he could to play in Canada's semifinal and gold medal tilts against Finland and the United States, respectively, but couldn't make it work.

He finished the tournament with six points in four contests in Milano Cortina. It was Crosby's first international best-on-best tourney that didn't end in a championship.

“It’s a gold-medal game — Olympics,” Crosby said after Sunday’s 2-1 overtime defeat to Team USA. “If I could play, then I’d be out there. It was a tough decision. In your head you always want to be out there and find every way possible, but not at the expense of what needs to be done. And then watching how we played today, the guys played incredible.”

Can Penguins stay afloat without Sidney Crosby?

Crosby is impossible to replace, and the void he leaves at 1C is a gargantuan one. The three-time Stanley Cup champion set an NHL record in 2024-25 by producing his 20th consecutive point-per-game season after being drafted No. 1 overall in 2005.

He was well on his way to continuing that piece of history; Crosby was having an excellent 2025-26 campaign, leading the Pens in both goals and points. He's also extremely durable, having missed just three games since 2021-22.

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In his absence, Rickard Rakell shifted to center at Wednesday's practice, playing between veteran Bryan Rust and rookie Avery Hayes. The second line of Evgeni Malkin, Egor Chinakhov and Tommy Novak remains unchanged.

Pittsburgh has missed the playoffs in each of the last three seasons, but had been looking well-positioned to return to the dance after putting together a 29-15-12 record before the Olympic break.

They're currently second place in the Metropolitan Division, a single point up on the third-place New York Islanders and one up on the Boston Bruins, who own the second wildcard berth in the East.

The conference is a logjam, and every single one of the Penguins' 26 remaining regular season games are going to be critical in their quest to be one of the last eight standing at the end of April.

The silver lining is that Kris Letang, who was sidelined prior to the Olympic break with a foot injury, was activated off of injured reserve on Wednesday. He's managed three goals and 25 points in 50 games in 2025-26.

It'll be interesting to see if Crosby can beat the timeline of approximately a month; that would see him miss around 16 Penguins games. The club returns to action against the New Jersey Devils at PPG Paints Arena on Thursday night.