Sidney Crosby isn't a fan of trying to take a broad, important subject and trying to condense it into a convenient soundbite. But he still managed to encapsulate the Penguins' season pretty succinctly when asked to summarize the experience. 

"I felt like there were a lot of games, walking out of the rink at the end of the night, where I felt like we could have won," he said.

For a third consecutive year, the Penguins are heading home early, failing to qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs yet again. 

This year was different than the first two misses, which both came down to the final two days of the season before the Penguins' fate was decided. This time, the mathematical elimination didn't happen until there was about a week and a half left in the season, but the realization that the hole they were in was insurmountable happened much sooner. There were just too many teams between them and a wild card spot to make a late push feel feasible.

Still, in the end, the Penguins finished the year 11 points out of a playoff spot. That sounds like a lot. But over an 82-game season? That's a couple of overtime games going their way, holding onto a couple of blown leads, getting off to a couple of better starts, and they could have found their way in a playoff spot. 

"If we found a way to be on the other side of that, things could have been different pretty quickly," Crosby said. "I mean, you saw the Eastern Conference and the log jam with so many teams trying to get in for those final spots. We could have been right there with a few wins."

Yeah, the Penguins' roster wasn't exactly constructed with the No. 1 priority being contending for anything this year. This was a year of retooling, collecting picks, prospects and young players with the goal of taking that next step next season. But even so, the Penguins ultimately ended up a handful of mistakes away from sneaking their way into a spot.

That's what makes this year a little frustrating, for the players. But that's also what gives the team hope that with the right offseason, they can be right back to having a shorter summer next year.

"I think that we're maybe not as far off as as it may seem," Ryan Graves told me. "Like, we've shown flashes of it. I think we are building something. It's kind of a transformation year. We've got some young guys that are ready to make the jump. And I think everyone can look in the mirror and be a little bit better individually, myself included. And I think that those little bits will add up."

Those "young guys" are one of the highlights of this season, and one of the biggest signs of hope for next season. Ville Koivunen and Rutger McGroarty are at the forefront of that, seemingly sliding into top-six roles with no transition period needed. Owen Pickering showed potential in his first stint in the NHL. Heck, even the fourth line in the finale of Sam Poulin, Vasily Ponomarev and Valtteri Puustinen looked like pieces that could be part of an effective bottom-six moving forward. And there's a whole wave of others down in the AHL who haven't had their shot up here just yet.

When Crosby was asked what gives him faith in the coming years, "the younger guys" was where he pointed.

"You see how they're doing and their commitment and their game," he said. "And I think that's definitely promising. That's something that takes time and patience, but I think it's encouraging."

Regardless of who is in the lineup, finding the consistency that evaded them over the course of this year.

"Consistency is the No. 1 thing, which is something that we couldn't find for longer periods of times this year," said Erik Karlsson.  "And you know, how do you fix it, or what do you do moving forward? I think it's not a question that I can answer."

It's a difficult question to answer because there wasn't just one singular element of the team game, one position, one facet that lacked consistency. 

Tristan Jarry pointed to problems in holding onto leads and closing out games as a general team-wide issue, but also fell on the sword himself for issues at the starts of games, saying the goaltender is the one responsible for the saves when it comes to the first-shot, first-goal trend from this season.

Crosby thinks that the team needs to be "stingier" defensively and make things easier on the goaltenders. And while the power play took major strides from last season, he thinks it's still something they'll have to build on if they want to turn this all around next year.

Blake Lizotte thinks that this year a big problem was a habit of "losing control" for only a short period, but the time they've managed to get things "back on the rails" they've allowed two or three goals and are in a hole. They need to do a better job of controlling those momentum shifts.

Bryan Rust deadpanned, "I think for me, if I knew the answer, I'd be in charge. And I'm not. I just work here," and cracked a smile at his own joke. But then he added, "everybody's learned lessons in this room for us to know that, hey, that's what we've got to do to."

The players who are currently on this team, with very few exceptions, could stand to be better on an individual level next season. Changes are definitely needed on the roster itself, too, though a complete overhaul isn't exactly necessary. A lot of the younger, faster pieces who can be part of this turnaround are already in-house.

Kyle Dubas has been speaking since Day 1 of his tenure in Pittsburgh about the importance of building something that will lead to long-term, stable success. But he also finds it important to get to that stage as soon as possible, so this current core -- namely, Crosby -- can be a part of it.

"We've got to find a way to get back there," Crosby said. "It takes a lot of different things. But I think if anything, teams have proven they can turn it around pretty quickly."

The Penguins are hoping they can do it, too.