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Tuesday, January 02, 2001

Penguins General Manager Craig Patrick has drafted Brian Leetch, Mike Richter and Jaromir Jagr. He has traded for Ron Francis, Ulf Samuelsson, Larry Murphy and Luc Robitaille.

The guy obviously knows a little bit about shrewd personnel moves -- he has two Stanley Cup rings to prove it -- and made the best of his career a few weeks back. The easiest, too.

All Patrick had to do was to avoid trying to talk Mario Lemieux out of making a comeback.

By simply keeping his mouth shut -- not much of a challenge for a guy better known for his silence than his speeches -- Patrick was able to add arguably the best player on the planet to his lineup without surrendering so much as a conditional draft choice.

That he's paying Lemieux ridiculously less than market value -- $800,000 or so for the portion of the season in which Lemieux will be active -- only makes it that much more of a coup.

Having Lemieux should make the Penguins a genuine force, if not a favorite, when the playoffs arrive, but a few significant holes remain on their depth chart.

They could use a No. 1 defenseman. A power forward would come in handy, too. And Patrick must decide if he will be comfortable relying on Jean-Sebastien Aubin, who does not have a second of NHL playoff experience, and/or Garth Snow to handle the most important job on the team in the postseason.

But while the window of opportunity created by Lemieux's comeback will close relatively quickly -- it's hard to believe that he would play more than two or three seasons -- Patrick said he doesn't foresee making moves that might improve the Penguins for the near future, but hurt them over the long term.

"I don't think that's our [plan]," Patrick said. "That's not our philosophy. We're still trying to be the best we can today, and continue to build for the future. That's what we always try to do."

That would seem to preclude a bold move like, say, renting Los Angeles defenseman Rob Blake, who will become an unrestricted free agent this summer, for the playoff run.

Patrick cannot address the merits of going after specific players on other teams -- that would be tampering -- and it's worth noting that he did not entirely rule out making a move designed primarily to bolster the Penguins this spring. He didn't sound like he has anything of the sort in mind, however.

"We haven't crossed that bridge yet," Patrick said. "If there's a situation that calls for that, we'd have to weigh it. But that's not something we're looking to do."

Trivia question

The Penguins have won five division championships during the past 10 years, but they didn't always spend so much time at the top. When did they move into first place in their division for the first time in franchise history? Answer at end.

Crafty rookie

Mike Modano hasn't called Milan Kraft for pointers just yet. No one's approached Kraft about starring in a how-to video, either.

But Kraft, the Penguins' rookie center, seems to be getting the hang of winning faceoffs in this league.

He remains one of the worst faceoff men on the NHL's worst faceoff team, but his progress during the past month or so has been downright meteoric. Perhaps, in part, because there was so much room for improvement.

After 21 games -- a quarter of the season -- Kraft had won 54 faceoffs and lost 133, a success rate of just under 29 percent. That was almost laughably low, until you consider that Kraft had been losing five for every one he won through the early weeks of the season.

During the second quarter, Kraft is 95-115, including a 7-10 performance during the Penguins' 5-3 victory against Ottawa last Saturday.

"I'm working [on faceoffs] almost every day," Kraft said recently. "I think I'll get better and better."

Truth be told, Kraft said, he is a pretty fair faceoff man.

"I won them in junior and at the world junior [championships] and back in [the Czech Republic]," he said. "But this is a different level. The guys are smarter and stronger."

Kraft credits teammate Martin Straka -- who has a little experience at going against bigger, stronger opponents on draws -- with giving him a critical piece of advice.

"I was holding my stick much higher [earlier in the season]," Kraft said. "Now, I'm lower. I have my skates and my knees lower, so there's more power for me."

There's a little more hope for him as a faceoff man, too.

Tough guy

Snow has been the Penguins' go-to goalie since Aubin injured his knee a month ago and has, with few exceptions, been fairly effective.

There's no need for him to fine-tune a Vezina Trophy acceptance speech, but Snow did some nice work in most of the 11 consecutive starts he made before getting a two-game suspension for leaving his crease to punch Florida tough guy Peter Worrell.

Snow credits Mike Keenan, once his coach in Vancouver, with selling him on the idea of getting his conditioning to the point where he could handle such a demanding workload.

"Mike Keenan was the guy who really instilled the proper work ethic in the off-season," Snow said. "And [conveyed the value of] maintenance work during the season. He's a fitness freak.

"I bike a lot more in the summer now. Instead of biking three times a week, when I was in Philadelphia, for 30 minutes a day, I probably did four to five times a week at 60 minutes. I almost doubled my workouts."

What Keenan he didn't change was Snow's combative attitude. He's the Penguins' most feisty goaltender since Andy Brown, and it hardly was out of character for him to chase down Worrell in the neutral zone and take a swing at him.

"I've seen him get into a couple of fights," defenseman Darius Kasparaitis said. "In the Philly game, he actually came out and stuck up for me and tried to go fight [Flyers defenseman] Luke Richardson. That means a lot for our team, having a goalie like that."

Judging Ivan

It still is premature to pass judgment on first-year Coach Ivan Hlinka -- while his knowledge of the international game has few peers, his feel for the NHL remains suspect -- and even those who are rooting for him to succeed in North America stop short of guaranteeing that he will.

Witness Buffalo goalie Dominik Hasek, who starred for Hlinka on the Czech team that won the gold medal at the 1998 Olympics in Nagano.

"I don't know," Hasek said. "It's hard to say. He had great respect in the Czech Republic as a player and as a coach, but now he's in a new country where everybody speaks English.

"I know it's a little bit hard for him. Everything depends on how the team [performs]. If the team succeeds, he will succeed. If not, he won't. I have great respect for him."

Leading man

Chances are Mario Lemieux won't be able to overtake Jaromir Jagr in the scoring race this season -- not when Jagr has a 37-point lead and plays on the same line as Lemieux -- which means that Jagr is the Penguin most likely to win the Art Ross Trophy as the NHL's top point-producer.

Jagr has won four scoring titles, including each of the past three, and might eventually match Lemieux's total of six.

Of course, as Jagr suggested earlier this season -- before he had any inkling that Lemieux was planning to revive his playing career -- he already would have more than Lemieux if Lemieux hadn't opted to hang around the game until the ripe old age of 31.

"I would have passed him if he wouldn't have played the last two years of his career," Jagr said. "I had my best years ever, but he was too good."

Trivia answer

The Penguins moved into first place in the Norris Division -- the first time they ever led their division -- by virtue of a 4-3 victory against the New York Islanders Jan. 3, 1980.