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Sunday, October 20, 2002

By Dejan Kovacevic, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

Last season, Johan Hedberg would have lost.

He would have lost his cool and, maybe, he would have lost the game.

As it turned out ...

"No broken sticks," he said, grinning after the Penguins' 3-3 tie with the Tampa Bay Lightning last night at Mellon Arena. "And you won't see any all year, either."

Hedberg received precious little support from his teammates in facing 41 shots. The forwards spun away from checks they could have finished. The defensemen, for the most part, simply spun, straying well out of position and failing to cut off lanes to the net.

But Hedberg kept his poise and kept the team in the game with his finest performance of the young season. Of his 38 saves, 31 came in the final two periods and overtime, many of them in spectacular fashion.

"I'm feeling pretty good right now," he said. "I'm never happy when I give up any goals, and I'm never happy when we don't win. But I feel I'm seeing the puck and playing it the way I want to."

That was evident in the Penguins' critical kill of a five-on-three Tampa Bay power play midway through the third period with the score tied, 3-3. The two-man disadvantage was brought on partly by Hedberg, who shot a puck over the glass to draw a delay-of-game whistle. But he more than made up for it by stopping all five Lightning shots, including three from point-blank range.

"Big, big, big kill," he said. "If they score there, we'd have a really hard time, and I'd blame myself."

But Hedberg's best moment came in the opening minute of overtime, when Lightning right winger Martin St. Louis slipped around the Penguins' defense to gain a partial breakaway through the right circle. Rather than wait for the speedy St. Louis to attempt a cut to the inside, Hedberg elected to slide toward him, pads stacked high. St. Louis elevated a backhander, but Hedberg's right leg deflected it away to bring one of the game's loudest roars from the 16,106 in attendance.

"I read it early," Hedberg said. "I knew he was coming from an angle, and he really shouldn't be able to go around me. So I just went out there after him."

Which is exactly the way Hedberg plays when he is on top of his game.

After a rough start in making only 19 saves in a 6-0, opening-game loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs last week, his statistics -- and his performance -- gradually have improved: He is 2-1-1 with a 3.54 goals-against average and .892 save percentage. Those numbers aren't exactly eye-popping by recent NHL standards, but there are two caveats:

One, he has faced an average of 32.5 shots per game, among the league's highest ratios.

Two, it's a different game this season with the league's crackdown on obstruction.

Not that he minds either.

"My attitude now is that I just want to be loose, and that's how I was before and during this game," Hedberg said. "If the game is going to be wide open, I want to have a wide-open attitude. Goals are going to be scored. They might tick me off. The goals tonight ticked me off. But the difference is that, last year, we weren't scoring. Now, we've got so many guys who can score that it's no big deal if the other team scores."

No big deal? Spoken like someone who underwent hypnosis this summer, which Hedberg did, in part, to control his temper in games. Last season, he cracked countless sticks over the cross bar in frustration.

"I understand the way the game is now," he said. "To be honest with you, I think it's fun. I really do. I think I'm at my best when I'm staying busy. One of the things I learned from the Toronto game was that I wasn't moving enough when there weren't shots. I wasn't sliding across for passes. Now, I'm doing that. I'm doing everything."

That's certainly how it appeared to the Lightning.

"We had 41 shots, so, obviously, it's a great game for Hedberg," St. Louis said. "He's a high-energy goaltender. He was all over the place. Give him credit: Even though he moved a lot, he was always in the right place at the right time."