PITTSBURGH

Sidney Crosby collided with a Pittsburgh Penguins teammate last Friday at practice and thought nothing of it. Just one of those things.

When the two-time MVP woke up Saturday, though, the headache he experienced felt familiar and he was hardly surprised by the concussion diagnosis that will keep the Penguins captain out indefinitely.

It’s well-worn territory to be sure for a player who missed the better parts of two seasons following a blindside hit to the head in January 2011.

That doesn’t mean, however, that what Crosby’s dealing with now will linger as long — or as frustratingly — as those interminable two years when he wondered when he’d get right.

If anything, what he endured then will only help him going forward.

“I think going through it, you understand the process and I think that progress is a good thing,” he said.

Crosby felt good enough on Tuesday to spend nearly an hour on the ice skating alongside injured teammates Bryan Rust and Matt Murray, but he declined to set any sort of timeline on when he may return.

Call it the residue from the aftermath of the hit by Washington’s David Steckel during the 2011 Winter Classic that forced Crosby to hit pause on his spectacular career.

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