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Question: I've been contemplating an idea as the discussion over the future of Mellon Arena unfolds. I assume Mellon Arena will one day soon be destroyed while the historical authorities will fight to the end. How about reconstructing the Igloo in miniature form as a house for what could be like the Hard Rock Cafe of Hockey in Pittsburgh? Maybe it could be built from recycled material from the Igloo. It could remain on the corner across from the new Arena, maybe be called "The Old Igloo." I imagine a Jumbotron hanging down in the center above a bar where people could gather for Penguins games. I also imagine booths along the outer perimeter with likenesses of great players who wore the Penguins sweater. Each booth could be dedicated to a player, with career stats and highlights accompanying the imagery. Bubble hockey, air hockey, Penguins hockey ??? it would be the coolest place to go for hockey in Pittsburgh other than the new Arena, and it could also serve as a high-profile Downtown attraction year-round. Am I on to something?

Ryan, South Side

MOLINARI: You put forth some intriguing ideas, but whether any will mesh with what developers come up with is impossible to predict. And make no mistake, it is the developers -- not the Penguins or fans or anyone else -- who will determine exactly what is built in the area around Consol Energy Center. The team and other officials can have some input -- like when there was a consensus that a hotel near the new building was necessary -- but it's the people who will invest money who will have the final say.

Those determinations will be made on the developers' projections of what figures to be most profitable and could feature housing, retail outlets, restaurants and bars or, most likely, some combination thereof. That's how things worked out in Columbus, which has become a template of sorts of energizing a dormant part of a city by filling out the area around a new arena.

The Q&A has received a number of suggestions from readers about what they would like to see built in the vicinity of the new building, and one suspects that the Penguins have gotten many more. (And that the volume will increase as actual development begins to take place.)

Giving the paying public what it wants usually isn't a bad idea --after all, the whole point of a development like the one pending for the arena area is to make money-- but what people would like to see go up doesn't always mesh with what the developers want.

Question: Why is it that a team that misses on a penalty shot is not awarded a two-minute power play? I feel that the penalty shot should be a bonus. If you make it, no power play, but if you miss, your team still has a chance with the man-advantage. It would seem that forcing a poor shooter to take a penalty shot would actually be better than facing a team's No. 1 power-play unit under the current rules.

Tim, Grand Rapids, Mich.

MOLINARI: The thinking here is that a team should be penalized just once for an infraction, whether it results in a penalty shot or a conventional penalty. Allowing a team to have a power play if it fails to take advantage of a penalty shot would seem to constitute a form of double jeopardy for the team guilty of the offense.

Most seasons, the conversion rate for penalty shots is roughly twice that of power plays, although the difference between the two is nominal to this point in 2009-10. Before last night, shooters had scored on three of 15 penalty shots (20 percent), while power plays were producing a goal 19.9 percent of the time.

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