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Q: I know that when a new owner takes over a team, he usually likes to choose his own guys to run the club. Has Jim Balsillie offered his support to the tandem of Ray Shero and Michel Therrien? I hope they are both here for the long haul, as this young team continues to grow. The last thing the Pens need is for someone to tear up the front office again.
Paul Feldmann, Upper St. Clair
MOLINARI: When you spend $175 million -- give or take a few bucks -- to buy something, you can pretty much do whatever you want with it, although there is one asterisk: Until Balsillie actually takes over as owner, which won't happen until the NHL Board of Governors formally approves the sale, he won't have the authority to change anything.
Once he does take over, a shakeup seems far more likely on the business side of the operation than the hockey one. Some people inside the organization feel Balsillie will be an absentee owner, which means he might well want to bring in at least a few people with whom he is familiar and whose judgment he trusts. Consequently, it would not be a shock if he replaced CEO Ken Sawyer with his own guy, and the after-shocks of such a move could be felt farther down the corporate food chain.
To this point, Balsillie has not taken a public position on the merits of Shero and Therrien and, if he's as smart as one would think he had to be to become a billionaire, he'll keep it that way, unless he wants to offer an unsolicited vote of confidence. Until Shero demonstrates that he's not the right man to run the on-ice side of the franchise -- and there is precious little evidence to suggest that -- it would be ridiculous for Balsillie to even think about replacing him.
An important facet of allowing Shero to do his job is making him responsible for evaluating the coach, and deciding how long he should be retained. At this point, there is no obvious reason for Shero to consider removing Therrien, who oversaw a very good training camp and has methodically schooled his players in the system he wants them to execute.
Q: Are the Penguins going to try firing more than a couple shots on opposing goaltenders? They have to prepare for nights that Marc-Andre Fleury won't have his "A" game and a non-existent offensive showing won't do the trick. I'm not expecting them to take 40 shots a night, but could they possibly break 30 once a week?
Judd Fuoto, Oakton, Va.
MOLINARI: Would you settle for 30 for a week, perhaps?
Clearly, managing a total of just 34 shots in their first two games puts up a red flag of sorts, although Therrien says he focuses more on the number of scoring chances his team generates than on how many shots on goal it gets.
That's a valid point, and there also were factors in the first two games that shouldn't be overlooked. In their 4-0 victory against Philadelphia last Thursday, the Penguins were short-handed for a third of the game and thus spent much, if not most, of the evening in their own zone. Two nights later, Detroit limited them to 13 shots by putting on an absolute defensive clinic that the Penguins simply did not play well enough to counter.
Still, if they make a habit of averaging 17 shots -- that's a good period for many clubs -- the Penguins will find it hard to be competitive, because no one is going to confuse them with the fabled Soviet national teams that could shoot something close to .500 from the field on a regular basis.
Q: Let's say that Pens did draft Eric Staal (instead of Marc-Andre Fleury)in 2003 and now have two Staals, Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, and they all live up to their potential. Is there any hope for any team to keep that group together with the NHL's salary cap? I think not, and that there should be some rule that if you draft a player, you can pay each the individual cap maximum and not be bound by the team cap.
Bill Martin, Stroudsburg, Pa.
MOLINARI: If living up to their potential means performing to a level worthy of being paid the maximum allowed by the league's collective bargaining agreement, no, the Penguins couldn't keep that group together. Not unless they were willing to fill out their lineup with cut-rate talent.
The CBA allows individual players to receive as much as 20 percent of the team's salary-cap maximum in the year in which their contract is signed. If (to keep the math as simple as possible) the cap ceiling would be $50 million in each of the years when those players negotiated their deals, that would translate to a $10 million salary for each of them, while leaving just $10 million more to pay the rest of the team.
Your proposal for exempting players from counting against the team cap if they were drafted by the club for which they are playing is swell for a team like the Penguins, who have drafted in the top five for five years in a row. Trouble is, it also would undermine the CBA, which was designed to hold down payrolls so that all 30 franchises can be economically competitive. What's more, it wouldn't be particularly fair to teams that haven't made a habit of wallowing at the bottom of the overall standings, the way the Penguins have for most of this millennium.
Q: I have a couple of basic questions about Jim Balsillie. If he really has money coming out his ears, is he willing to put up a good chunk of personal money to a new arena? And why is the need for a new arena as urgent now as it was before? I realize he didn't get rich by spending on bad investments, but it also seems he could afford to keep the team in the current arena for a few years if he really is committed to staying in Pittsburgh.
Matt Mills, Granbury, Texas
MOLINARI: Balsillie also can afford to pay $50 for a cup of coffee. Does that mean he should? Or that he should have to?
If the reports about his personal wealth are accurate -- and there's no reason to think they aren't -- he probably could pay for an arena with the contents of the spare-change cup on his nightstand. Unfortunately for Western Pennsylvania, that's not the point.
Like it or not, unless Isle of Capri gets the slots license, in which case the Penguins would be legally bound to play in the arena IOC has pledged $290 million to build, Balsillie will have all the leverage in deciding what to do with the franchise. Because he has no ties to this region and wouldn't know the difference between McKeesport and McKees Rocks, people who think he has a strong emotional commitment to keeping the franchise here are deluding themselves.
That doesn't mean he'll act on what many believe is his desire to transplant the franchise to southern Ontario -- now there's an area where he has ties -- but because elected officials in this city, county and state have allowed the Penguins to move to the cusp of unrestricted free agency, Balsillie has the latitude to explore any option that appeals to him. The league can try to dissuade him from taking the franchise elsewhere, but Balsillie has the financial resources to challenge any legal hurdle he might encounter.
Of course, if the Penguins had been offered something along the lines of the current incarnation of Plan B five or so years ago, the whole issue would be moot. The city would have an up-to-date multi-purpose venue, the Penguins' presence would be guaranteed for decades to come and a lot of people would be sleeping a lot better.
Finally, if the Penguins do stay in Pittsburgh, they will spend at least a few more winters in Mellon Arena. The standard timetable for constructing an arena, start to finish, in this part of the country is about three years. That means that if work begins this afternoon -- which it won't -- the best-case scenario would be for the new building to be ready for opening night of the 2009-10 season. Unless the Penguins volunteer to play all 82 games on the road in each of the next few years, they'll have to extend their lease at Mellon Arena, something team officials made it known more than a year ago that they'll be willing to do, if necessary.
Q: Why has the organization lost interest in 27-year-old Milan Kraft? I know he hasn't put up good numbers in the Czech league, but playing with lower-quality teammates can have that effect. Prior to the lockout, he seemed be just hitting his stride. He netted 19 goals in 66 games his last season, in an NHL full of obstruction. So why, when the Penguins need a pure goal-scorer, not look in their own talent pool?
Bruce Hamilton, Winnipeg
MOLINARI: For starters, Kraft is a center, and with Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Jordan Staal, Dominic Moore, Erik Christensen, Maxime Talbot, among other, on the depth chart there, finding a spot for him could be quite a challenge. And even if the Penguins did clear a place for him, Kraft might have trouble getting to it, because sub-par skating is his greatest shortcoming. Suffice to say, the league's renewed emphasis on speed does not bode well for Kraft's chances of coming back to North America, even though he has some pretty fair hand skills.
Q: Of all the amazing events in Sidney Crosby's young life, the one that stood out for me was that he could run a 4.3 40 when he was 14. That must be an exaggeration, right?
Ron Coughenour, Phoenixville, Pa.
MOLINARI: Yeah, 14 was a pretty good age for Crosby. Not only did he turn in a 40-yard-dash time worthy of the NFL's most speedy receivers, he also bench-pressed a Ford Explorer, swam underwater from Florida to Aruba and won the Nobel Prize for chemistry.
OK, maybe not.
That story about his time in the 40 actually did appear in print somewhere but, for the record, Crosby insists that he is not a particularly fast runner and that, while he has been timed over 40 meters, he hasn't been over 40 yards. For the record, he can't recall what his personal best over 40 meters is.
Bottom line: If Crosby earns a gold medal at the Olympics someday, it figures to be in ice hockey, not track and field.
Q: I know that the Penguins had to stay commited to the Isle of Capri plan. But by not backing a Plan B of any sort, what type of financial loss are they experiencing in merchandising? It seems to me that if they were to say that they would back an alternative plan, it would give fans confidence to purchase a jersey or hat. I have to assume that merchandising is a big part of their income, and can't see myself purchasing a Crosby or Malkin jersey when there is a real possibility that the colors or team name could change in a year.
Jason Moritz, Trophy Club, Tex.
MOLINARI: There's absolutely nothing preventing the Penguins from coming out solidly in support of Plan B. Not unless you count the provision in their agreement with IOC that calls for a substantial cash penalty -- believed to be as much as $10 million -- if they do so.
They'd have to sell an awful lot of hats, T-shirts and jerseys to cover that expense, especially when their cut of any jersey sale -- whether it's a Crosby or an Alexander Ovechkin or a Joe Thornton -- is one-thirtieth of the retail price.
