It doesn’t take too much guesswork to figure out the story behind the most prominent jersey number on the Penguins.
Sidney Crosby was born on August 7, 1987: 8/7/87. His superstition regarding the number even carries over to his contract, which has an annual $8.7 million cap hit.
But on a team full of unorthodox jersey numbers — from Jake Guentzel’s 59, to Patric Hornqvist’s 72 and Carl Hagelin’s 62 — the stories on why players wear the digits they do vary from case to case. Sometimes, there’s a story behind it. In other cases, though, it’s just a number they were handed one day.