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Tuesday, February 05, 2002

By Dave Molinari, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

Kevin Stevens of the Penguins is dealing with some pretty significant issues these days, including whether he should walk away from his playing career.

That might not be the biggest one facing him -- not when Stevens, a graduate of the league's substance-abuse program, went off recently to seek help with an unspecified behavioral problem -- but even under the best of circumstances, deciding when it's time to retire can be difficult.

Penguins Coach Rick Kehoe came to grips with that reality nearly two decades ago, but not until after trying to ignore the potential consequences of continuing to play after sustaining a herniated disk in his neck.

"I had the injury, but it was still tough," he said. "I tried to come back. I took a chance. I didn't have surgery."

"I could have had permanent damage done, but I didn't look at it that way. I wanted to play."

Kehoe was 33 at the time -- that's three years younger than Stevens is -- and was convinced that, "I could play at least two or three more years." At least he was until the numbness in his right arm got so severe that he accepted the advice of the medical professionals who told him it was time to retire.

Older players sometimes delude themselves about their ability to remain competitive, Kehoe said, because their feel for the game doesn't deteriorate as the years ago by. Just their reaction times.

"You still, mentally, have the knowledge of the game," Kehoe said. "It's just your reflexes, getting there. You maybe lose that half-a-step, where you used to get there and now you're not there."

Kehoe clearly wasn't prepared to leave when he was forced out of the game, and said that's not uncommon among men who have spent almost all their lives playing it.

"As a player, you never look at the end of the road," he said. "Never. You always look at it like, 'I'm just going to play and play.' Yeah, it's going to end, but it's not like it's going to end when you're in your 30s. It's always going to end, like, when you're 40-something.

"The sad part about sports is that when you retire, you're still a young man. You still have half a life, three-quarters of a life, left.

"You play this sport for 10, 15 years, and it's been your life. You love doing it. Then, all of a sudden, you can't play anymore or you retire, it's tough."

Trivia question

Who was the first opposing player to record a hat trick against the Penguins? Answer at end.

Injury benefits

The Penguins have lost 181 man-games to injury this season, and all but a handful of those have been to players who had a prominent place in their plans.

Taking guys like Mario Lemieux, Martin Straka, Alexei Kovalev, Janne Laukkanen and Ian Moran out of the lineup for extended stretches has had a predictably negative impact on their season -- especially when Jaromir Jagr was traded last summer -- but might actually pay long-term benefits for the franchise.

Because of those personnel problems, prospects such as Kris Beech and Josef Melichar, who might have been cast in supporting roles, were forced to shoulder a major-league workload, and responded well to the challenge. That can only serve to accelerate their development.

"We've got guys now, younger guys, who have been successful at different levels who are being put in situations they might not have been put in right away if [Jagr] was here, or if [Lemieux] hadn't gotten hurt, or if Marty wasn't hurt," Moran said. "It's going to be great for those guys in the long run."

View from the top

Right winger Aleksey Morozov has nine goals and six assists in his past 10 games, and is looking a lot like the player the Penguins were hoping to get when they invested a first-round draft choice in him in 1995.

For the past few weeks, Morozov has been playing with poise and purpose, working to get himself into scoring position, then taking advantage of the opportunities that are created.

Now, Morozov wouldn't be the first player to go through a supernova phase -- to burn brighter than any nearby star, then disappear -- so it's premature to proclaim that he has arrived as a front-line player in the NHL.

But even he appreciates how, with his 25th birthday just 11 days away, he might well have reached a point at which the course for the balance of his NHL career will be set. When he will either lock up a high-profile role or drift back toward the bottom of the depth chart.

"There's been a lot of talk about me the last three or four years," Morozov said. "This is a really important time for me. If I go and score more and more, I go forward and it means I'll be a first- or second-line player, not be on a third line, a checking line."

Home sweet home

Eric Meloche grew up in Montreal and, at age 25, is old enough to have vivid memories of the Forum, probably the most fabled arena in hockey history.

But he is excited enough about the prospect of performing in front of family and friends for the first time since reaching the NHL when the Penguins visit the Canadiens Thursday that he probably wouldn't object to playing the game in a parking garage off Rue de la Montagne.

"Just as long as I play the Canadiens in Montreal," he said. "Whatever building."

The highlights of his first three weeks in the NHL, Meloche said, were his first game at Mellon Arena and one the Penguins played in Edmonton a few days after he was recalled because it was televised on Hockey Night in Canada.

"That, so far, was the most exciting," he said. "But definitely, once we play in the Molson Centre, that will be the greatest height I've been to."

Stiff penalty

Forward Billy Tibbetts plays a high-energy game, a style that forces him to straddle the line between performing with reckless abandon and being out of control.

And it isn't exactly unprecedented, during his first season and a half as a pro, for him to end up on the wrong side of that line.

That certainly was the case Saturday when, two days after being returned to the Penguins' American Hockey League affiliate in Wilkes-Barre, Tibbetts received six minor penalties.

The Baby Penguins' propensity for taking poor and/or undisciplined penalties prompted Coach Glenn Patrick to spell out the consequences for any player doing so. And to set a particularly stiff punishment for Tibbetts.

"Players will find themselves not playing if they are undisciplined," Patrick told the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader. "The exception is Billy Tibbetts. It'll cost him a lot of money if he does that."

In his second game back, Tibbetts was outstanding, and his work on the point of the power play was cited as a major factor in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton scoring on two of its six tries with the man-advantage.

Could be worse

It is easy for players to get bogged down in the details of their professional lives, to focus on the petty annoyances that crop up occasionally.

And, more importantly, to lose sight of how they operate in a world where the minimum salary is deep into six figures, and the average annual pay is better than $1.5 million. A world where, as a matter of course, they experience travel and adulation beyond the wildest dreams of most people.

Still, some players do recognize, and appreciate, their good fortune. And journeyman John Jakopin, acquired from Florida on waivers Oct. 2, is high on that list.

"There are a lot worse things you could be doing," he said. "My dad was a plumber. Every day I remind myself when I come to the rink how lucky I am to have my job."

Of course, Jakopin probably would feel even luckier if he were reporting to work at an NHL rink these days, but he was assigned to Wilkes-Barre last week after passing through waivers.

Trivia answer

Chicago center Stan Mikita scored four goals against the Penguins -- three on Les Binkley, one on Hank Bassen -- Dec. 6, 1967 to record the first hat trick by an opponent in franchise history.