Tuesday, November 11, 2003

By Dejan Kovacevic, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Eddie Olczyk put his Penguins through their longest practice of the season yesterday at Southpointe, one that had his players gasping by the time it was done.

But that was nothing compared to what he did to them the previous day.

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Without alerting the media, Olczyk and his staff summoned all players for a clandestine meeting at Southpointe on Sunday -- a scheduled day off -- to watch a video montage of all 19 goals they allowed on their 0-3 road trip which climaxed Saturday with a 9-0 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning. Worse, they turned it into a full-length feature, rewinding and replaying repeatedly to dissect the breakdowns for nearly two hours.

The reviews, it should surprise no one, were 22 thumbs down.

"I couldn't watch," goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury said.

"Pretty depressing," left winger Kelly Buchberger said.

"Painful," defenseman Brooks Orpik said.

Olczyk enjoyed it no more than his players, but he made clear yesterday that his intent was not to torture but to teach.

"We wanted to show them what was going wrong, why we can't keep playing the way we have," he said. "Sometimes, the best way to do that is to have everyone sit down and take a look at it."

Yesterday provided a chance to have the players leave the classroom and practice it.

Again and again.

The team took the ice at 10:30 a.m. and remained there without a break for two hours. The session was equal parts instruction and skating, with players spending nearly as much time with Olczyk and assistant coach Lorne Molleken at the chalkboard as they did in performing drills. At one point, Olczyk gathered them at center ice and addressed them in a booming voice for 15 minutes. The punctuation was 15 minutes of rink-length sprints.

Afterward, in meeting with reporters, Olczyk was able to cite the pertinent statistics of his team's trip off the top of his head.

"We gave up 19 goals in three games," he said. "Three power-play, one short-handed, one empty-net. So, that's 14 goals left. Out of those, six were just blatant turnovers, just giving the puck to the other team. That's one area, as individuals, we have to clear up."

Olczyk's hope entering his first season as a head coach was to shape the Penguins into a stingy team in the mold of the Minnesota Wild, but defense has been anything but a strong suit. Their 3.69 goals-against average as a team is the worst in the NHL by a wide margin, the next-worst being the Edmonton Oilers' 3.23. In five-on-five play, Olczyk's favorite topic of discussion since being hired, they have allowed 30 goals, tied with the Washington Capitals for most in the league. They also have been outshot by every opponent and allowed a league-high average of 36.5 shots per game.

The staff yesterday varied its lessons from forechecking to neutral-zone play to backchecking, but the one constant was an emphasis on assignments, specifically knowing which opponent to cover and how aggressively to cover him. The bulk of the Penguins' lapses in their first 13 games have been the product of being too passive, and Olczyk instructed his players to attack their opponents once they are certain they have the correct assignment and the situation is appropriate.

He also worked on shifting defensive alignment when the puck changes sides in the zone. Too often, the Penguins have failed to react properly to a lateral pass or to a missed shot by an opponent which carries from one side to the other. Olczyk told his players to maintain a constant awareness of where they should be in such a circumstance.

Olczyk stressed that he was not installing a new system yesterday, not even tweaking the old one. Rather, he wanted to reinforce what had been taught starting with the third week of training camp in September.

"We're not changing anything," Olczyk said. "Because we believe and I believe that it is the right way for us to play."

The players seemed to embrace the refresher course.

"All of us were kind of doing our own thing, five guys going five different ways, breakdowns everywhere," Orpik said. "It was a matter of re-teaching things, reminding us what we're supposed to do."

"It's good to have everybody trying to get back on the same page," Buchberger said. "You've got to go back to basics in times like this. We've got to learn from our mistakes. ... And we were making mistakes. The video never lies."

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