Wednesday, October 08, 2003

By Dave Molinari, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

There is a sign just outside the Penguins' locker room, along the walkway leading to the ice surface at Mellon Arena.

	The Penguins' season could hinge largely on the showing of their 18-year-old goaltender, Marc-Andre Fleury. (Peter Diana, Post-Gazette) Click photo for larger image.

It reads: "The Runway. The Final Steps Before The Penguins Take The Ice Before The Sold-Out Home Crowd."

Listen to people around the NHL, and you get the idea the sign should be replaced by one saying, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."

Or that the Penguins are doomed to spend the next six months trapped in seven concentric circles of misery, a netherworld of defeat and despair and frustration. That, by the time next spring arrives, their 65-point season a year ago will be remembered as the best of times.

Such thinking isn't entirely unfounded. Not when the Penguins have been pleading poverty for years, making personnel decisions based more on payroll than performance.

Not when some of the most accomplished players in recent league history have been replaced by guys who aren't household names beyond their own back yards.

Not when their best player has been in the league longer than one of his teammates has been alive.

Not when their new coach has more experience working a telestrator than a chalkboard.

This team shouldn't be confused with the one that was able to squeeze just 38 points out of the 1983-84 season. That group was a collection of misfits and underachievers, along with a few guys who had the work ethic of a welfare fraud, and the truly remarkable thing is that it actually managed to win 16 games.

The embarrassment was worth it for the franchise, because it gave the Penguins the right to claim Mario Lemieux in 1984 NHL Entry Draft. There's a nice prize for the team that selecting first in 2004, too -- many scouts regard Russian center Alexander Ovechkin as the best prospect since Lemieux -- but the Penguins shouldn't count on it.

And not only because league has gone to a draft lottery to prevent teams from sabotaging their own season to get the rights to a particularly promising young player. Ovechkin might end up here -- the Penguins are a pretty good bet to get a lottery pick -- but their season won't be the 82-game tragicomedy so many expect.

Their overall skill level and depth remain modest, but their locker-room chemistry is as good as any Penguins team in years, and coach Eddie Olczyk has sold his players on a system that exploits their strengths and conceals their weaknesses, at least as much as possible.

That doesn't mean they'll be muscling alongside Colorado, Detroit and New Jersey this season. Just that the losses won't be as frequent, or as lopsided, as seemed likely just a few weeks ago.

Coach

When the Penguins hired Olczyk as head coach, it was a move that seemed to defy logic.

They brought in a guy whose coaching experience was confined to working with 15- and 16-year-olds in Chicago to work with a club in desperate need of structure. A guy who had proven to be a good communicator in the broadcast booth, but never behind a bench.

He didn't appear to be entirely unqualified -- Olczyk had played the game for a lot of years and got to observe a lot of elite coaches -- but passing over all the career coaches who wanted the job in favor of a guy who hadn't run a team seemed an unnecessary gamble.

If so, it appears to be paying off. Better than anyone -- including general manager Craig Patrick and anyone else in on the decision to hire Olczyk -- could have expected.

He remains an unknown commodity in some ways. He has yet to angle for a personnel matchup in a game that truly matters. To make a major tactical adjustment in a matter of seconds. To match strategies with Ken Hitchcock or Andy Murray or Jacques Lemaire.

The Penguins' defense is the team's greatest concern, and Olczyk has designed his defensive-zone coverages to give extra responsibilities to his forwards, fewer to defensemen. Nothing revolutionary there, but it's the kind of planning that might wipe out some of the talent disparity the Penguins will face.

Olczyk leans heavily on assistant coach Lorne Molleken, for whom he played in Chicago, but even with a mentor such as that, he might end up with ulcers the size of pucks by next April.

That would go against his personality, though, and if Olczyk were told he'd have to be an alchemist to get this team into the playoffs, he probably would smile and reach for a pointed hat and a wand. And his chalkboard.

Goalies

The Penguins laid the cornerstone of their Stanley Cup teams when they drafted Lemieux in 1984. They might have done the same thing when they traded up to get Marc-Andre Fleury in the June draft.

Having an elite goalie does not guarantee a championship, of course, but not having one pretty much assures that a team won't win a Cup.

Couple Fleury's easy-going nature with Olczyk's emphasis on sound defensive play, and it becomes easier to understand why the Penguins decided to sign him.

Returning him to junior would have been the safe move -- there's no question Fleury, 18, would have dominated the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League -- but exposing him to the NHL could speed his development. And the danger of him suffering serious psychological wounds from playing behind a rebuilding team should be minimized by Olczyk's system.

Still, the Penguins have 10 games to decide whether they want to keep Fleury for the entire season, and the temptation to return him to his junior team -- whether it is for on-ice reasons or to hold down the payroll -- might be strong.

Good as he is -- and great as he will be -- there's no reason to believe he can get the Penguins into the playoffs.

Fleury figures to share the job with Sebastien Caron, who is coming off a breakthrough season and who is capable of contributing at this level, even if he doesn't have Fleury's gifts for the job.

Defensemen

Sometime in the next few years, there's reason to believe the Penguins will have one of the best young defense corps in hockey.

Those high-round draft choices they invested in the likes of Brooks Orpik, Ryan Whitney, Noah Welch, Ondrej Nemec and Drew Fata will pay off, and the unit someday will be compared favorably to Montreal's fabled defense of the late 1970s.

But the Penguins enter this season with limited skill and little NHL-caliber depth on their blue line.

Being without Michal Rozsival for the next two months because of knee surgery is a wicked blow -- more than it would be for most clubs -- and Olczyk has to cringe every time he sees Josef Melichar take contact on his shoulder. Melichar has an ice bag strapped to his shoulder so much of the time it seems like a fashion accessory.

Dan Focht, acquired from Phoenix late last season, could evolve into a physical force someday, and free-agent signee Drake Berehowsky adds muscle and grit and leadership.

Dick Tarnstrom is coming off his second lackluster training camp in as many years -- remember how he was exposed in the 2002 waiver draft and was a healthy scratch for the opener last season? -- and the Penguins can only hope he performs at the level he reached last season, particularly before his foot was broken at the end of November.

Nolan Baumgartner, acquired from Vancouver in last week's waiver draft, lacks the speed to be an impact player but can handle the puck and made the good first pass that will be so important to the Penguins' transition game.

At 38, Marc Bergevin has the savvy to do a decent job in his own end, and showed last season that he can handle more of a workload than many expected. And it's impossible to put a value on his locker-room presence, because Bergevin can keep teammates loose in the most tense of situations.

Forwards

Some say it's unrealistic to think a 38-year-old on a rebuilding team could contend for an NHL scoring championship.

Those who have watched Mario Lemieux the past few weeks think it's foolish to doubt that he will.

Lemieux appears to be in the best shape of his career -- parts of the guy actually look chiseled -- and shows no signs of the many maladies that have troubled him throughout his career.

He's not as inclined to challenge opponents one-on-one anymore, but maybe he's just getting merciful in his old age. Telling Lemieux he's not capable of doing something might not be the dumbest thing in the world, but it's a medalist.

He's scheduled to open the season on left wing, alongside Martin Straka and Konstantin Koltsov. Their speed will open space for Lemieux, and Koltsov showed during the preseason that his hands might be catching up with his feet.

The second line of Rico Fata between Ryan Malone and Aleksey Morozov has some offensive potential, although it probably shouldn't be counted on to generate too many goals, especially early in the season.

The Matt Murley-Brian Holzinger-Matt Bradley unit is a classic third line -- defensively responsible and able to chip in with the occasional goal -- and the No. 4 line, which had Steve McKenna with Mike Eastwood and Kelly Buchberger before McKenna got an eye injury last week, offers savvy and solid defense.

One of the key variables in the Penguins' success this season might be the production they get from the second line. Ramzi Abid, who has power-forward potential, slipped into Morozov's spot late last week, and if any combination of Fata, Abid, Morozov and Malone jells offensively, the Penguins should be able to manufacture the goals needed to compete with most teams.

Dave Molinari can be reached at 412-263-1144.

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