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Sunday, November 03, 2002

By Dejan Kovacevic, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

When Kent Manderville was tapped on the shoulder pads and told to be ready to join the second line with a change on the fly, he knew why he was summoned. He always knows. His role is to center the fourth line, to check the opposition's top forwards, to grind in the corners, to kill time for the Penguins' stars.

But that doesn't mean he limited his focus to defense.

Not with the score tied late in the third period. Not with the opponent being the Tampa Bay Lightning, one of the NHL's hottest teams in the early going.

Not with one premonition he had.

"I think you have to always be thinking about how opportunities can present themselves," Manderville said. "Tampa was pressing us so much that I was thinking there almost had to be a defensive breakdown in their zone. I was expecting it."

He was right, and it led to the winning strike in what turned out to be a 5-3 victory last night at Mellon Arena.

The Lightning had made it 3-3 with four minutes left in regulation, sapping the energy from the overflow crowd of 17,108 and placing the Penguins on the verge of blowing a two-goal lead.

Coach Rick Kehoe put out the Mario Lemieux line after the goal, but the shift was atypically short, all three forwards returning to the bench within 20 seconds.

Kehoe wanted his second line out next, but he elected to replace right winger Alexandre Daigle with Manderville, a considerably more reliable defensive performer. The other two usual second-liners, left winger Jan Hrdina and Kris Beech hopped over the boards with him.

Almost immediately, Hrdina gained control of the puck along the left boards and found an extra gear to penetrate the Tampa Bay zone. He was being pursued by Lightning left winger Dave Andreychuk, one of the NHL's most accomplished goal-scorers but far from one of its fastest skaters, and he easily pulled away to head toward the left corner.

All Tampa Bay eyes seemed to be on Hrdina at that point. In addition to Andreychuk, both defensemen, Jassen Cullimore and Cory Sarich, looked at him from the low slot.

Manderville slowed a bit.

"You always want a good angle when you're coming in. You don't want to just go flying through there for no reason. I wanted to give myself some room so that, if the puck came out to me, I could have an angle where I could get a good shot off."

Manderville found his angle, but he fell well short of the other part of his plan.

Hrdina made a soft backhand pass which found Manderville about 15 feet out. But, when he tried to one-time it, it skipped upward and struck his stick again on the follow-through.

Not exactly Brett Hull material.

"I hit it, and it went up and hit it again. It's kind of hard to explain, really."

So was the result.

In part because of the bizarre release, Nikolai Khabibulin, one of the NHL's finest goaltenders, looked as handcuffed as a rookie as the shot wobbled past him waist-high on the short side, just 30 seconds after Tampa Bay's goal. Lemieux later hit an empty net to account for the final score.

Manderville, whose goal was his first this season and boosted his career total to 36 in 575 games, celebrated by pumping both fists to the crowd enthusiastically.

"It was a great feeling. You know, hockey's a fun game to play. It's a job, a profession and all that, but sometimes we can be just like little kids out there. I was feeling what the crowd was giving us. It was an intense game, like a playoff atmosphere, and I wanted to let them know that we appreciate it, that we feed off it."

Manderville, the Penguins' top penalty-killing forward, was asked which was more satisfying, blanking the Lightning's power play on four chances or netting the winner.

"I'll take the two points, actually. I don't just think about what I do at one end. There are two sides to the puck. You always have to be thinking about scoring goals."