Peter Diana, Post-Gazette Sidney Crosby has scored 47 points this season.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Richard Lintner is a right-handed shooting defenseman with impressive skills. He can skate. Handle the puck. Pass and shoot it, too.

His game is, in many ways, tailored to the "new" NHL, with its renewed emphasis on talent.

He has significant experience in the league and is entering what should be the prime of his career.

And his NHL rights belong to the Penguins.

Not that it matters much, because the Penguins likely would try to lure Ron Stackhouse out of retirement before they would consider bringing Lintner back from Europe, but it hardly seems out of the question that he could resurface in the league someday.

Especially after the Penguins lose possession of his rights next summer.

Lintner, who had three goals and two assists in 19 games after being acquired from the New York Rangers in the Alex Kovalev trade Feb. 10, 2003, returned to Europe a few months later and is laboring in Sweden these days.

He has six goals and nine assists in his first 27 games with Skelleftea in the Elitserien this season. There is wild talk in some hockey circles that he actually broke up a play in Skelleftea's end a few weeks back, but that couldn't be confirmed. And shouldn't be believed.

	Richard Lintner

Gifted as he is, Lintner has major problems when forced to read and react, because hockey sense is no more than a trace element in the makeup of his game. It isn't any prettier when he's forced to work in his own zone, because he is marshmallow-soft and, during his time in the NHL, wasn't just a defensive liability; he was a defensive no-show.

Any body contact he initiated was strictly incidental, and there were times when forwards got past him so effortlessly that they appeared to go through him. Even on slow-motion replays.

Lintner never seemed to grasp his considerable limitations in the defensive end -- when he was told late in the 2002-03 season that he would be used on the wing for a game, he reacted as if he had learned his puppy had been stolen -- but that would be less of an issue now than it was when he was in the NHL.

These days, teams covet defensemen who can move the puck the way Lintner does, sometimes even if it means overlooking serious flaws in their game.

Indeed, a case could be made that Lintner could have filled a role for the Penguins this season, provided he had a partner able to do the defensive-zone work of two men. (And that coach Michel Therrien and his staff had clearance from the accounting department to buy antacids in bulk.)

Long term, though, there wouldn't be a place for Lintner because the Penguins have at least two right-handed defensemen who could claim spots in their lineup -- and who would require the kind of stay-at-home partner Sergei Gonchar and Ryan Whitney already have -- in the reasonably near future.

Micki DuPont, back in North America after spending three winters in Germany, is smallish (5 feet 10, 186 pounds) but has flashed some skill, although his current stint with the Penguins has not inspired talk of a Norris Trophy campaign by the team's media-relations department.

Alex Goligoski, a 5 foot 11, 180-pound junior at the University of Minnesota, also could make his way into the mix within the next few years, Chances are neither he nor DuPont will play with Lintner in the NHL, but it's conceivable that either -- or both -- could play against him in coming seasons.

Balsillie may have hurt his own cause in Harrisburg

This whole thing will be nothing more than an obscure historical footnote unless Jim Balsillie reverses course again and decides he wants to buy the Penguins, after all, but that doesn't alter the fact that Balsillie took a surprising congenial stance during his appearance before the Gaming Control Board in Harrisburg last Wednesday.

While he made it clear that the Penguins remained squarely behind Isle of Capri's bid for Pittsburgh's stand-alone slots parlor license -- remember, IOC has pledged $290 million toward construction of an arena if it receives the license -- he was more receptive to considering whatever Plan B elected officials cobble together than a lot of people anticipated.

Now, Balsillie is a billionaire and isn't in the habit of seeking business advice from someone who couldn't operate a BlackBerry, let alone invent it. Nonetheless, given that the Penguins' lease at Mellon Arena expires in little more than six months and that a franchise featuring the likes of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Marc-Andre Fleury would be wildly attractive to almost any market, Balsillie surrendered some leverage by being so agreeable to a discussion of what happens if IOC doesn't get the license.

One can't help but wonder if the team's interests -- assuming those interests truly involved keeping the franchise here -- might not have been better served if Balsillie's message to the Gaming Control Board had gone something like this:

"You have no obligation to award the slots license to Isle of Capri, just as I have no obligation to keep the team in Pittsburgh past the end of the current season. There is no question that it is your right to give the license to Forest City or PITG Gaming.

"Of course, if that happens, it is my right to immediately auction the team off to whatever town or region -- whether it's Las Vegas or Kansas City or southern Ontario or anyplace in between -- makes me the most attractive offer.

"In that event, feel free to submit a proposal to keep the team in Pittsburgh. Just don't be surprised if I give it as much consideration as you gave the franchise's requests for an up-to-date facility during the first five or six years Mario Lemieux owned it, eh?"

Perhaps Balsillie delivered a similar message a couple of days later, though, when he backed out of his agreement to buy the team because the league wanted him to, among other things, agree to keep it here, under any and all circumstances.

If anyone in Harrisburg is paying attention -- or, more important, actually cares -- it's hard to believe they could miss the connection between the guarantee of an up-to-date facility and the certainty of the franchise staying put.