The Penguins are such a hot ticket, they already have sold more seats for the upcoming season than for the entire season when last they played (2003-04).

That translates into nearly half a million tickets purchased amid the exhilaration generated by Sidney Crosby and the New Guys.

And remember: It's only mid-August.

The usual sales bumps of training camp (starting Sept. 13) and the regular season (starting Oct. 5) remain weeks away, yet the telephones in the Penguins' offices continue to ring and tickets continue to sell.

"There has never been a three-week stretch of season-ticket sales like this," stressed Tom McMillan, the Penguins' vice president for communications and marketing. "Ever."

Sure, in December 2000, when owner Mario Lemieux decided to become a player again, that spurred a rest-of-season rush that ended with an average attendance of 16,398 and 26 sellouts. Separate trades for Luc Robitaille and Sergei Zubov in the mid-1990s were major moves at the time, but virtual waiver-wire transactions by comparison now. The drafting of Jaromir Jagr, the trade for Joey Mullen and the free-agent signing of Bryan Trottier was one good week in 1990, but nothing resembling the Penguins' past three.

The sudden arrival of the world's most-heralded junior hockey player since Lemieux in Crosby, the signing of offensive All-Stars Sergei Gonchar, Ziggy Palffy and John LeClair, plus the trade for goaltender Jocelyn Thibault -- all since winning the July 22 draft lottery -- have sent Penguins season- and 20-game ticket sales into a commodities market relatively foreign to the front office.

So fast and furious have been sales to date, those seeking 10-game ticket plans have been put on hold, and single-game seats, once they go on sale Sept. 17, conceivably could be sparse.

If somebody wants to attend the Oct. 8 home opener against Boston or the Oct. 15 Tampa Bay date of the Lemieux Classic DVD giveaway (66 minutes in length), he or she may have to purchase tickets to more than one, two or 10 games.

"You structure your policy based on demand," McMillan explained.

Full-season packages are the Penguins' first sales priority, followed by 20-game plans and 10-game plans. Then come single-game seats, which go on sale Sept. 17 apparently because the NHL wants all its teams to open that business on the same day, as already advertised on the ticket-selling Web sites of Anaheim, Chicago and Los Angeles, at least.

"But, if the pace continues the way it's been going -- and you never know about paces -- there will be a very limited number of single-game tickets available for the home opener.

"And that's with two months to go before the opener. It hasn't slowed down."

Certainly, tickets are moving at a speed that already eclipsed the 475,080 sold for the Penguins' 2003-04 season, when they finished last in the standings and in attendance, their 11,877 per-game figure roughly 5,000 seats below the NHL average. On the other end of the spectrum, they could be approaching levels breaking their previous highs of 16,398 per game in 2000-01 when Lemieux returned, 16,691 when he retired in 1996-97 and 16,714 in 1993-94, a club record -- as are the 34 sellouts that season.

The Penguins might reach a 2005-06 juncture where they will have to halt all season- and 20-game ticket sales so they might withhold seats for the 10-game and single-game fans.

"I hope we get to that point," McMillan said. "Those are nice challenges to have, but we're not there yet. It's an unprecedented time, and we're riding the wave.

"The fans have never had this kind of thing, either. Who could even predict this would happen? We were just excited to have the CBA. Then to have the draft and the free agents. ... In normal circumstances, you hoped for one big offseason move. Craig [Patrick the general manager] keeps signing guys."

August is normally vacation time for Penguins ticket-buyers, who would start buying in larger numbers after Labor Day. Instead, sales started the minute after the team won the Crosby lottery at 4:30 p.m. July 22 and spike with each big addition: Gonchar, Palffy, Thibault and, just Monday, LeClair.

Sponsorships and advertising also are on an uptick, McMillan said, declining to divulge current numbers as is club policy. Ticket sales and television ratings trigger such deals, even driving prices higher, and indeed the first of those indicators appears to be going through the Mellon Arena roof.

It's quite a turnaround for a team that finished 25th, 29th and 30th in the NHL its past three seasons. Monday afternoon, following the LeClair announcement, ESPN's "Around the Horn" devoted a topic to the subject: Everybody wants to be a Penguin. Said McMillan: "I was walking back to my desk and stopped dead when I saw that."

NOTES -- Eurohockey.net reported last night that Milan Kraft re-signed with the Penguins. ... The Penguins re-signed winger Michel Ouellet, leaving Ryan Malone as the only unsigned player who was given a qualifying offer last month. Brooks Orpik, Aleksey Morozov and Milan Kraft likewise remain unsigned after declining 2004 qualifying offers. ... The Wheeling Nailers, the Penguins' East Coast Hockey League affiliate, named Patrick's brother Glenn as their new head coach. Glenn Patrick went 115-152-38-15 as the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Baby Penguins coach and worked as a professional scout for the Penguins last season.