He took a pretty pass from Brian Dumoulin before going into another gear and splitting Adam Fox and Ryan Lindgren, chipping a shot past Rangers goalie Alexandar Georgiev and chasing him from the net.
Crosby's tally capped off a burst of three goals in a 61-second span in the final minutes of the first period, with Kasperi Kapanen and John Marino also getting on the board.
That is the fastest three goals by any team this season, topping their own 71-second mark the Penguins set just a few days earlier in the opening minutes of their eventual 4-3 loss to Philadelphia on Thursday. But unlike that night, where the Flyers battled back from a 3-0 deficit, this time the Penguins kept pushing.
"We kept on putting pucks behind them and just applying pressure," said Kapanen, who added two assists for a three-point night. "I think the game against Philly, we let our foot off the gas. Today we played a pretty solid 60 minutes and it showed. That's the way we've got to play every game."
As head coach Mike Sullivan said the other day, when a team scores three goals that quickly, that early, sometimes they're battling against human nature because there's so much hockey left to be played.
"As much as you want to push and continue to do the things that have brought you the success or the early success in the game, there's some times that that can present a challenge," Sullivan said. "There's a tendency to want to exhale, and you can't."
It was a hard lesson learned, so Sullivan said what happened that night didn't need to be brought up. The Penguins understood what they needed to do.
"We just talked about playing the game the right way and playing on our toes and defending hard when we needed to," Sullivan said. "But from a mindset standpoint, trying to continue to score goals. We certainly don't want to be a team that sits on leads, I think our team is at its best when we're continuing to try to score, and we just have to do it the right way. We can't become a high-risk team.
"I thought our guys did a real good job tonight, they played on their toes, they defended hard, they created a lot of offense off their defense, and we finished on the opportunities that we got. I thought we did a better job managing the game, and that's an important aspect of winning."
The Penguins actually did have a pretty slow start to this game, with Mika Zibanejad opening the scoring early and the Rangers outshooting them 8-1 just a few minutes in. But the flurry of goals got the Penguins right back on track.
"Sometimes you just have to weather the storm, and there's going to be ups and downs in the game and swings," Marino said. "But the most important thing is just stick with it, stick to your game, and things will come."
"Obviously not the best start, but thankfully my team picks me up there and got three goals in the last part of that period," said goalie Casey DeSmith, who made 23 saves in the game. "And we went into the break up two, so that was huge."
The second period was scoreless before Evgeni Malkin and Zach Aston-Reese added goals at the 13:57 and 16:37 marks of the final frame, respectively.
"I think we just kind of kept the foot on the pedal and we played more together as a unit," Marino said. "We played more of a team game, trusted each other and we were all working together - whether it be the breakouts or just little plays like that. It kind of translated to the rest of the game."
