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Q: Now that Sean Avery is no longer with the Dallas Stars, do the Penguins have any interest in acquiring him? Let's be honest, they could use the toughness.

Arden Nicoletta, Carnegie

MOLINARI: The Penguins could use quite a few things - a prolific goal-scorer to play on Sidney Crosby's wing, a reasonably healthy collection of forwards, a mild rise in the salary-cap ceiling - but an overpaid, self-absorbed, radioactive chemistry-killer is nowhere on the list.

Whatever merits Avery may have as a player -- and on those occasions when he's actually bothered focusing on his craft, he's proven capable of contributing -- they are more than offset by the toxic presence he has had in every NHL locker room that he's been a part of. He has worn out, if not shredded, his welcome in Detroit, Los Angeles, New York and now, Dallas.

Throw in Avery's salary-cap hit of $3.875 million for the balance of this season and the three that follow, and it's inconceivable that any team at this level will be interested in taking him off the Stars' hands. A number of minor-league clubs reportedly have declined opportunities to add Avery to their roster, even though Dallas would have been responsible for paying him. If that doesn't convey how Avery is viewed inside the industry, nothing will.

And while it's apparent that Avery's crudely expressed remark a couple of weeks ago about how other NHL players end up dating his former girlfriends clearly was the breaking point in his relationship with the Stars, it's his body of deplorable work -- including charges that, while playing for the Kings, he hit Georges Laraque with a racially based slur -- that quite possibly will turn him into persona non grata in this league.

Q: How are individual players' ice time tracked?

Neil Steimer, Oklahoma City, Okla.

MOLINARI: All official league statistics, including individual ice time, are compiled by a team of off-ice officials based in the press box. In the case of ice time, members of that unit responsible for monitoring ice time use a specially designed computer program running on a touch-screen laptop to record every time a particular player goes onto or off the ice.

Q: With Kyle McLaren playing these days in the AHL and the Pens' large defensive injury list, do you think it would be a good idea to try and add him to our lineup?

Nick Carter, Rarotonga, Cook Islands

MOLINARI: The Penguins' defense actually is getting healthy again -- Philippe Boucher returned to work last Thursday after missing six games, and Ryan Whitney's 2008-09 debut seems imminent -- so unless they have another run on injuries on the blue line, figuring out what to do with all the bodies, not adding another one, will be management's primary concern.

But even if the Penguins were going to be thin on defense for a while, it's hard to imagine them going after McLaren. There's no reason to think they're interested in taking on another NHL contract and they have limited cap space available, which means they'd have a hard time trying to shoehorn in his hit of $2.5 million.