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Tuesday, November 06, 2001

Mike Lange makes his living with words, and he's done it well enough to earn a place at the Hockey Hall of Fame.

	Mike Lange In search of the right words. (Bob Donaldson, Post-Gazette)

Hey, almost everyone uses terms such as "hacksaw," "mule," "back" and "scratch." Lange, however, was the first broadcaster in the history of hockey -- or any other sport, for that matter -- to assemble them in phrases such as "Scratch my back with a hacksaw," and "He beat him like a rented mule," two of the trademark expressions he uses to punctuate goal calls.

Lange, though, is more comfortable with the spoken word than the written one, which is why he has recruited former Pittsburgh Press sports writer Bill Heufelder to help him with his speech for his Hall of Fame induction Monday in Toronto.

"I just wanted to make sure that when I wrote it, I wrote it in the correct manner, because I'm not a good writer," Lange said. "I can verbalize it much better than I can write it, so I just asked [Heufelder] for some help."

Penguins General Manager Craig Patrick will enter the Hall, too, but as of a few days ago, he hadn't devoted much effort to his speech.

"It's not prominently on my mind," said Patrick, who has been focusing on keeping his team in the Eastern Conference playoff race until guys such as Mario Lemieux and Alexei Kovalev rejoin the lineup later this month.

And while Patrick did seek advice from assistant coach Joe Mullen, a member of the Hall of Fame Class of 2000, recently, that probably wasn't the shrewdest move of his careers. While Mullen can be described in a lot of ways, "chatty" isn't one of them.

"I asked Joey," Patrick said. "But he's not a wealth of information."

Patrick said he has "a lot of people to thank" for the help they've given him, and that will make up the bulk of his speech.

But if any of his allotted four minutes are left over -- like, say, 3 1/2 of them -- he might be able to pass them along to Lange, who acknowledged he might need a bit more time than the induction organizers have suggested.

"We're going to try to keep it in that range," he said. "But we may be allowed to stretch it a minute or two."

Lang said he has "some bits and pieces done" but the particulars of his speech remain a work in-progress.

"I don't know how many stories and things along those lines we'll have," he said. "But we'll make reference to some people who have been instrumental in helping my career."

They range from his minor-league hockey mentor in Phoenix to Bay Area broadcasters such as Russ Hodges, Lon Simmons and Bill King, whose work while he was growing up in Sacramento ultimately helped to shape Lange's delivery.

"Those are guys who had a big influence on me, as to what kind of style I would have. I carried it from there and, hopefully, built something a little different."

There's not much question Lange has done that, and he made it happen in a city with a history of embracing unique broadcasters such as Bob Prince and Myron Cope.

"I was like a little fly coming into the city when I landed here [in 1974], and I was befriended by Bob Prince, of all people," Lange said. "After about a month, I knew I was in the right place and the right time. ... I said, 'You know, this is where I should be.' "

Few, if any, hockey devotees in this area ever argued the point.

And when he formally enters the Hall of Fame in six days, they'll have every reason to buy Mike a drink, and get his fans one, too.

Trivia Question

What is the fastest hat trick allowed by the Penguins? Answer at end.

Baby steps

Not many people associated with the Penguins foresaw their American Hockey League in Wilkes-Barre staggering out of the gate this season -- the Baby Penguins were 1-9-1-1 in their first 12 games -- and forward Billy Tibbetts said living through that slump was every bit as miserable as one might expect.

"It was tough losing down there," said Tibbetts, recalled from the Baby Penguins a week ago. "I was really trying to do everything I could to get some wins."

What made it even tougher to accept was that Wilkes-Barre was almost unbeatable in the early weeks of last season and finished the year by reaching the Calder Cup final. Just a few months later, the team that had appeared to be so solid seemed to be unraveling more by the day.

"That's one of the things," Tibbetts said. "Guys are thinking about last year, and how we started off so good. It's especially tough for guys who were there the first year who were so terrible, then last year [fared so well], and now it's their third year, and they're like, 'What's going on?' "

Actually, there are a couple of explanations for the Baby Penguins' poor start. There was a lot of roster turnover in the off-season, and the goaltending of Rob Tallas and Sebastien Caron ran the gamut from awful to abysmal for most of October, although Tibbetts declined to single them out for blame.

"We had 11 rookies, so you can never pin it on just one guy, like the goalie," he said. "But, for sure, the goaltending hasn't been where it needs to be."

Wilkes-Barre actually has shown a bit of a pulse lately, and is off to a 1-0-1 start on a four-game road trip. The Baby Penguins still have enough time to salvage the season.

"There's plenty of talent down there, a great mixture of rookies and veterans," Tibbetts said. "But making the playoffs is starting to become an issue. The more games you lose now, the harder it is to make it up at the end of the year."

Better days

Alexei Kovalev hasn't played in a game for more than three weeks now -- heck, when he left the lineup to have arthroscopic knee surgery, the Penguins were 0-4 -- and still doesn't know precisely when he'll get back into uniform.

And while he doesn't have much good to say about his time off, it has given him a little perspective on how fortune he is to be so durable.

Kovalev, after all, played in all 82 games in the 1999-2000 season and missed three in 2000-01 only because he was serving a league-imposed suspension for shooting a puck toward an official.

"Right now," he said, "I'm really appreciating how good it is to be on the ice all the time, to be playing."

The Wilson trade

Penguins defenseman Mike Wilson is just 26 years old but already has been involved in two trades.

He was sent from Buffalo to Florida for defenseman Rhett Warrener and a fifth-round draft choice March 23, 1999, in a deal that inspired moderate reaction around the league. Four years earlier, however, he had been part of one of the most significant transactions in recent NHL history.

That's when Vancouver sent Wilson, who had been the Canucks' first-round draft choice in 1993, center Michael Peca and a No. 1 choice to Buffalo for right winger Alexander Mogilny and a fifth-round pick.

Mogilny was, by far, the biggest name in that trade when it was made, although Peca's profile has risen considerably in recent years. Even so, Wilson joked recently that he doesn't necessarily buy into the notion that the transaction in question should be remembered as "the Mogilny trade."

"I like to refer to it as, 'the Wilson trade,' " he said, smiling.

Trivia answer

Derek King of the New York Islanders put three pucks past goalie Tom Barrasso in a span of 78 seconds in a 7-6 Penguins victory Oct. 15, 1991, at Nassau Coliseum.