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Thursday, June 13, 2002

The Penguins called the media together yesterday to talk about the NHL draft, which takes place June 22.

It might be expected the Penguins would want to keep the draft quiet, as they've been pretty terrible at it for the better part of the past decade. It's not all their fault, though. People come to expect the same level of success in the NHL draft that teams have in the NFL draft. It doesn't work that way. It's much harder to evaluate the high school kids being chosen for the NHL than the college men being selected for the NFL.

Even taking that into consideration, the Penguins have been awful.

They bring to mind, in fact, the local sports barometer for awful, the Pirates.

When the Pirates finished fifth in 1993, out of the playoffs for the first time since 1989, almost no one saw the dismal future that awaited them. The consensus was that with a little tinkering and some good drafting, the Pirates could come back.

Are the Penguins the Pirates of 1993?

It's certainly starting to look that way. The similarities are remarkable.

Just as the economics of the baseball made the Pirates non-competitive by not allowing them to keep their best players, the economics of hockey are doing the same to the Penguins.

For financial reasons, the Pirates lost Bobby Bonilla, John Smiley, Barry Bonds and Doug Drabek over a two-year period beginning in 1991. They've yet to recover.

The Penguins have been hit as hard, but not as quickly. In the past four years, they've lost Kevin Hatcher, Ron Francis, Ron Tugnutt, Bob Boughner, Jaromir Jagr and Darius Kasparaitis because they couldn't afford them. They're almost certain to lose Robert Lang to free agency next month.

This isn't to suggest the Penguins are about to embark on a nine-year absence from the postseason, as has been the case with the Pirates. Qualification for the NHL playoffs is too easy for that to happen. It is to suggest that the Penguins' days of being a serious contender for the Stanley Cup are over until the economics of the NHL change.

The problem is this: The NHL is heading down the same horrific road that Major League Baseball already has traveled. The rich are getting richer, the poor poorer. The list of teams that can win a championship seems to get smaller every year.

Unlike the NFL and NBA, where salary restraints allow small-market teams to compete, MLB and the NHL are ruled by the rich. Only the wild-spending Arizona Diamondbacks were able to interrupt the dynasty of the super-rich New York Yankees.

In hockey, the Detroit Red Wings are the equivalent of the Yankees. They are in the process of sweeping the Stanley Cup final, which should surprise no one because their roster is laden with store-bought future Hall of Famers.

The Penguins could not come close to approaching the payroll of the Red Wings and couldn't even with a new arena.

Which makes this draft, where the Penguins select fifth, all the more important. General Manager Craig Patrick and his staff have been routinely unsuccessful in attempting to upgrade the team through the draft, particularly in the early rounds.

It's a path the team can't continue to follow. With free agency not much of an option, the Penguins, like the Pirates, must grow their own talent. And like the Pirates, they've been remarkably unsuccessful at it.

In the 1990, 1991 and 1992 drafts, the Penguins had a streak of utter brilliance, taking Jaromir Jagr, Markus Naslund and Martin Straka with their first pick. Since then, their No. 1 choices have been Stefan Bergkvist, Chris Wells, Aleksey Morozov, Craig Hillier, Robert Dome, Milan Kraft, Konstantin Koltsov, Brooks Orpik and Colby Armstrong.

Morozov and Kraft might yet blossom, and it's too early to tell about Koltsov, Orpik and Armstrong. Still, it is not a good record, and it is made worse by the fact the second-round selections have been less productive.

Unlike in baseball, the anti-small-market economics of the game are not firmly entrenched. The hockey players' union is not as powerful or as smart as its baseball counterpart. Nor could the hockey owners be as poorly led as the baseball owners.

But economic sanity, if it comes, is years away. The Penguins must begin drafting with far more success than they have to maintain the past success.

Bob Smizik can be reached at bsmizik@post-gazette.com.