Triumphant return for Penguins' Crosby

One flick of the wrist. One guttural scream. One very simple message to the rest of an equal parts welcoming and wary NHL.

Sidney Crosby is back.

The superstar center capped his return from concussion-like symptoms with 2 goals and 2 assists in his season debut as the Pittsburgh Penguins roared by the New York Islanders 5-0 on Monday night.

Unleashing more than 10 months of frustration in 16 energetic minutes, Crosby put to rest all the questions that had popped up during his lengthy comeback.

Can he still skate? Can he take a hit? Can he play at his nearly peerless level? Can he mix it up?

The answer — for the first night anyway — is an emphatic yes.

“I don't really have good words for it,” coach Dan Bylsma said. “That was a special in a lot of ways.”

For no one more than Crosby, who celebrated his first goal in 328 days in decidedly un-Crosbylike fashion.

After a breathless sprint down the ice in which he wove through the New York defense and beat rookie Anders Nilsson with a backhand, Crosby raised his arms in triumph and let out a roar punctuated by a hard-to-miss profanity.

He laughed while watching himself on replay and later apologized for his poor choice of words while admitting, “I couldn't hold that in.”

Crosby added assists on goals by Evgeni Malkin and Brooks Orpik and capped his comeback with a second tally, a backhand that fluttered by Nilsson early in the third period to provide the final margin.

Crosby played nearly 16 minutes and for the first time in nearly a year absorbed a hit at game speed. New York's Travis Hamonic cleanly checked Crosby to the ground during a first-period Pittsburgh power play.

“Did I know who it was? Yeah,” Hamonic said. “I thought it was just an opportunity to be hard on someone and, you know, that's all it was and just got caught out there battling.”

It was the first real test of Crosby's comeback, and he popped up immediately to get back in the play as the Penguins — and the rest of the hockey world — exhaled.

Even if Crosby wasn't exactly thrilled at getting popped.

“I was mad at myself for putting myself in that position,” Crosby said. “(But) I'm glad I kind of got that over with too, early on. There's going to be more hits and probably harder ones.”