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Tuesday, December 25, 2001

By Dave Molinari, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

Robert Lang grew up in Czechoslovakia before the Velvet Revolution. When true freedom was a distant dream. When following the National Hockey League was terribly difficult and playing in it was downright unthinkable.

It's no surprise, then, that Lang's boyhood hockey heroes were not Wayne Gretzky or Mike Bossy or Guy Lafleur. Instead, he homed in on Vladimir Ruzicka, a Czech who spent five years in the NHL after the Iron Curtain fell.

"Back then, he was on top of his game," Lang said. "He was unbelievable."

So, in some ways, was Lang, because he didn't limit his heroes to guys from his homeland. Fact is, he admired several from the Soviet Union, the country that dominated his own.

"You could pick anybody from the [Vladimir] Krutov-[Igor] Larionov-[Sergei] Makarov line," he said. "If you watched any hockey from back then, world championships and things like that, that was beautiful."

Not all of Lang's current co-workers had such a worldly view in those days, but all seemed to have players they looked up to. Finnish defenseman Janne Laukkanen admired Jari Kurri and Esa Tikkanen, key members of the Edmonton dynasty in the 1980s.

Coach Rick Kehoe grew up in Windsor, Ontario, idolizing the likes of Dave Keon, Bobby Baun and Jacques Plante of the Toronto Maple Leafs, while winger Toby Petersen, a Twin Cities native, latched onto Minnesota North Stars center Mike Modano.

As it turned out,Kehoe began his NHL career with the Maple Leafs, while Petersen ended up spending a lot of quality time with Modano because, during his early days in Minnesota, Modano lived with the family of one of Petersen's Squirt hockey teammates.

Presumably because they opted for careers in hockey -- and were good enough to reach the NHL -- most of the Penguins eventually got a chance to meet the players they once revered. For Laukkanen, that opportunity came during the 1991 Canada Cup tournament, when he, Kurri and Tikkanen played for Finland.

"It was great," Laukkanen said. "They were still superstars. That's why you'll remember it for the rest of your life."

Defenseman Ian Moran, who grew up near Boston, still remembers meeting his hero for the first time. He eventually got to play alongside him, too.

And while no one ever called Allen Pedersen, then a defenseman with the Bruins, a superstar, it's easy to see why Moran looked up to him.

"He was an unheralded guy who did all the little things to help the Bruins win," Moran said. "He blocked a ton of shots, he always was willing to sacrifice. He was great in the community.

"I liked everything that he represented. He did all the dirty work. At that time, the Bruins were really successful -- they had been to the [Stanley Cup] final and won Presidents' Trophy -- and he was a guy who didn't get accolades around the NHL, but he's the kind of guy that every team needs if it's going to be successful."

Sounds like Moran was reciting his job description.

He met Pedersen while still a junior in high school. Moran's team from Belmont Hill High School was at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport when they noticed the Bruins arriving for a game against the North Stars.

"Everyone just waits and waits and waits, and here comes Big Al and we all ran over to him," Moran said. "He said, 'I can't believe you guys wanted to talk to me and not [Raymond] Bourque or [Cam] Neely or anybody. And we were, like, 'No, you're our favorite. We love you.'"

Years later, Pedersen came to the Penguins' training camp on a tryout and was paired with Moran.

"We ended up spending a lot of time together, going to lunch and dinner," Moran said. "It was great."

Because the Penguins know what it's like to have had heroes, most understand that young players might be looking up to them, too.

"It's not something you actively think about -- you can't plan on it -- but you know there are kids out there who look up to people in our position," Petersen said. "That's why you have to be very careful of what you say, and that you're setting a good example."

Most do, although Moran doesn't seem convinced that anyone admires him for the usual reasons.

"I'm sure there are kids out there who like me for things," he said. "But, if anything, it's probably because I bleach my hair."

Trivia question

Tom Barrasso holds Penguins playoff records for games played (101), victories (56) and shutouts (6). Where does his goals-against average rank among Penguins goalies appearing in more than one playoff game?

Coming up short

Special-teams play tends to be cyclical, but assistant coach Randy Hillier, who oversees the Penguins' penalty-killing, thinks it's no mere coincidence they're not as efficient while playing short-handed as they were earlier in the season.

The Penguins, once solidly in the top quarter of the league, have given up at least one power-play goal in 16 of their past 20 games and slipped into the bottom half of the rankings.

"What we, at times, have gotten away from is everyone reading off of one another," Hillier said. "What we were doing when we were successful was, we were aggressive, but we were aggressive collectively. When one guy made a move, that triggered everyone else to read off that person.

"What's happened over the past couple of weeks is that we're not reading all that well. One guy may be jumping, and the other guys delay a second, and it buys the power-play time to set up again. We're spending more time in our end than we should be. We've had chances to clear zones where we're not getting the puck all the way down, so we're turning it over. Consequently, we're getting caught out too long."

Hillier said the Penguins' problem is "pretty obvious when you see it on film," and that pressuring the opposing power play remains a key to the success of their penalty-killing.

"When we're going well, we're aggressive," he said. "I think we're sitting back a little too much now at times. When there are opportunities to move and react, we're not doing so, like we were in the past."

Devils in disguise

The Penguins have been pretty ordinary for most of this season -- and worse than that on occasion -- but they've turned in two very impressive victories against New Jersey, which they will face tomorrow at Continental Airlines Arena.

They beat the Devils, 5-1, in New Jersey Nov. 13, then spanked them, 6-0, at Mellon Arena two weeks later.

Never mind that New Jersey has gone to the Stanley Cup final in each of the past two years, winning the championship in 2000, or that it ran the Penguins out of the playoffs in five games last spring.

The Penguins are 5-0-1 in their past six regular-season meetings with New Jersey, since that humiliating, 9-0 loss at Mellon Arena Oct. 28, 2000. There's no way to dispute that stat. And no way to fully explain it, either.

"During the regular season, we do play well [against the Devils]," Lang said. "I don't know why. After a while, you get a lot of confidence and just know you can do it. I think that's a factor, too."

Moose taunting

At the end of the Penguins' 4-4 tie in Washington Saturday, Capitals backup goalie Craig Billington taunted Penguins goalie Johan Hedberg from the bench, using his hands to imitate moose antlers.

Hedberg didn't seem to react to the inflammatory actions of Billington -- who is 1-3-2, with a 3.65 goals-against average and .873 save percentage -- which could be explained in several ways.

It's possible he didn't see what Billington was doing. Maybe he decided it would be classless to respond in kind. Or perhaps Hedberg simply had no idea how to do an impersonation of a sieve.

Trivia answer

Barrasso's playoff goals-against average with the Penguins was 2.93, putting him behind Ron Tugnutt (1.77), Les Binkley (2.10), Johan Hedberg (2.30), Gary Inness (2.67), Michel Plasse (2.67) and Ken Wregget (2.86) on the all-time list. Jean-Sebastien Aubin (0.00) and Wendell Young (1.54) also have lower goals-against averages, but have only one playoff appearance to their credit.