Video: Sidney Crosby Scores Goal of the Season to Lift Penguins Over Canadiens

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Sidney Crosby's goal was his 24th of the season. Getty Images

Updated | In his 13 years in the NHL, Sidney Crosby has scored 463 goals, but few are as special as the one he netted on Wednesday night.

With five minutes left in the second period and the Pittsburgh Penguins down 2-3 on home ice against the Montreal Canadiens, Crosby plucked a pass from Jake Guentzel out of the air, knocked it forward to the front of his stick and nonchalantly tapped it past Carey Price.

Hand-eye coordination has always been one of Crosby's greatest assets but scoring such a goal against Price—one of the world's best goalies—was simply sensational even for a player of his calibre.

Mind. Blown. 🤯 pic.twitter.com/ESCm4n6Ghc

— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) March 22, 2018

Sidney Crosby's hand-eye coordination remains undefeated pic.twitter.com/hfL90DVgsj

— Dimitri Filipovic (@DimFilipovic) March 22, 2018

Crosby's control and composure to finish the move off were made even more impressive by the fact he did so at full speed, but Price was far from surprised by the Penguin star's latest exploit.

"Are you surprised, really?" the Canadiens goalie, who finished with 34 saves in his first game in a month, was quoted as saying by ESPN. "It was a great play. I tried to hit it, and he got it first, then he batted it back in. That's pretty impressive."

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The Penguins' captain has now scored 463 goals in NHL career including the playoffs. Getty Images

Penguins goalie Casey DeSmith, who saved 27 of the 30 shots he faced, was also very impressed by his teammate's spectacular finish.

"That was one of the cooler things I'll see," DeSmith told ESPN. "It was perfect timing, too, right at the end of the second, get it right back, I think that was a huge goal."

Predictably, Crosby was a lot more modest about the goal, sounding as casual about it as he looked while scoring it.

"You try to finish plays out in practice," Crosby said, as reported by ESPN. "Sometimes it works out that you can do it in the game, and sometimes it doesn't. Fortunately, it did today."

Stunning as Crosby's goal was, it was also crucial for the Penguins, as it allowed them to level the game to 3-3, before a goal by Derick Brassard put them in front with 2:38 played in the third period. Guentzel added a fifth with less than two minutes left.

Earlier, Evgeni Malkin and Patrick Hornqvist had put the Penguins 2-0 up, before the Canadiens rallied to take a 3-2 lead thanks to goals from Jonathan Drouin, Nikita Scherbak and Jacob De La Rose.

Up until Crosby's goal, the two-time Stanley Cup winners were staring at the prospect of losing back-to-back games for the first time since the turn of the month. The Penguins have struggled for consistency in March, winning four games in regulation, two in overtime and losing their remaining four matches—one in overtime.

However, the win put them second in the Metropolitan division on 89 points, two points behind the Washington Capitals.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of Sidney Crosby.

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