Penguins

Kovacevic: Not even 66 could have envisioned all this glory

Jun 13, 2017 • 1:35 pm

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Brief and to the Point ...

• For several decades, the NHL was a six-team league. Which obviously didn't make for much of a league. It was more like a game of bridge. I win today, you win next week, Uncle Tony takes the next two. You and I were the Maple Leafs and Red Wings, and Uncle Tony was the Canadiens.

Then, in 1967, the NHL doubled in size from what's still commonly called the Original Six to a dozen teams. It became, for the first time, a league much more in the scope of North America's other professional sports.

Oh, Uncle Tony kept winning for a while. The Canadiens, still loaded with Hall of Fame talent, raised the Stanley Cup six more times in the 1970s.

Then the Islanders won four in a row from 1980-83.

Then the Oilers won five within 1984-90, a seven-season span.

And now, here are your Penguins, of course, with five. That matches the Oilers for most by a post-expansion franchise. It's also tied for the sixth-most of all time while, amusingly, being one more than the Rangers have managed despite New York's franchise having joined the NHL way back in 1926.

What's it all mean?

"It means," as Mario Lemieux was telling me on the Bridgestone Arena ice late Sunday night, "that we've come a long way."

The big man grinned with the remark, but it's got merit, certainly on a personal level.

In 1984, when he showed up in Pittsburgh as a lanky teen still learning English phrases, he'd regularly make public appearances to promote the sport. I'll never forget seeing him at a Thrift Drug in Monroeville, propped uncomfortably behind a cafeteria-style table with no more than a handful of fans in line for his autograph.

There's a misperception that Lemieux's arrival instantly elevated the Penguins here. It isn't true. The year before he came, the indoor soccer Spirit outdrew them in their own building. The night he made his home debut against the Canucks, there were 5,000 empty seats. And that was a good crowd that season. There were seven total sheets of ice for amateur hockey in the entire seven-county region. And the Penguins themselves, of course, didn't even qualify for the playoffs for his first five seasons.

It wasn't easy.

"I know. I was there," Lemieux said with another smile. "There were some tough times, some real challenges. But we're fortunate that we've had some great people, some great players who came to Pittsburgh and helped us win the Cup. And we're fortunate to have more great people, great players keep doing that."

I like that wording, if only for its portrayal of the gap between Lemieux's two championship teams, then the first one Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin won in 2009, and now these past two. Because, at least from this perspective, there's something extra to be said for a franchise that builds with one group, sustains a high level of success for an additional decade, has to hit an all-out reset button only once, then builds up a whole new core that itself is smartly reinvented before long.

Now, there are five Cups in 50 years. One per decade. And there's so much more, making this feel like a fine time to step back for a broader, if random, scope:

• Since 1987-88, the Penguins have had 24 winning seasons and five losing seasons. The latter marked the only times they've missed the playoffs, and their current streak of 11 appearances is the NHL's longest.

• In the past decade alone:

• Since the 1967 expansion, others have made the Stanley Cup Final more often, but they're the first to make consecutive appearances on three separate occasions: 1991-92, 2008-09 and now these two. No flukes. When they've been great, they've stayed great.

• By leading these playoffs in scoring, the Penguins moved into fifth all-time for postseason scoring with 1,118 goals. Only the Canadiens (1,427), Bruins (1,373), Flyers (1,282) and Blackhawks (1,212) have more.

• This one always floors me: The Penguins have claimed the Art Ross Trophy for the NHL's top scorer 15 of the past 25 years, and they've done so with four different players: Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, Crosby and Malkin. This is a huge part of what's made them, in all that time, the league's marquee attraction, even on the road.

Look, I'm not inclined to get into all kinds of apples-and-oranges comparisons between our city's half-century of hockey and whatever happened back in the dog-sled days. But it's becoming increasingly safe to say that, for a good while now, nobody's done it better.

• By the way, the ultimate apples-and-oranges comparison would be between the Lemieux and Crosby eras, as measured by Cups. Ask anyone who saw Lemieux's early teams, then look up that Crosby's second team made the playoffs, and his third and fourth were in the Final.

Don't be that guy or gal who brings this up. It won't end well.

• The Penguins sound very confident they'll be able to keep Justin Schultz, a pending restricted free agent, even if that means signing a one-year contract to buy time. That's what I was told here after the championship.

I don't see keeping Schultz as optional. It's got to happen. Beyond the obvious reason that he's really good, he's also an essential safety valve for when Kris Letang goes down. Paying him, say, a $4 million average annual value over 4-5 years is hardly prohibitive with all the cap room that's about to be created.

• Of the pending unrestricted free agents -- and I opine here with all due overwhelming respect on all counts -- the Penguins need to err on the side of moving on. Matt Cullen's going to retire, based on the vibes I got from him. Chris Kunitz might, too. Otherwise, it's Nick Bonino (29), Ron Hainsey (36) and Trevor Daley (33).

This broader group, those with two rings from these past two summers, has played 213 games in the past 612 days, including the offseason.

Let's be blunt here: There will be no three-peat with the same or even a similar cast. It might not require a roster transfusion, but Daniel Sprong, Oskar Sundqvist, Zach Aston-Reese, Josh Archibald and Frankie Corrado need to get in there at some point. No scholarships, please, but their participation will be more than welcome.

Keep the core intact, as ever, but freshen up the legs of the supporting cast.

• Hey, here's an idea: How about not having Gary Bettman present the Cup anymore?

My own views on his job performance aside, the scene has been so embarrassing for so long, and it was never uglier than Sunday night. The fans in Nashville didn't just boo the commissioner, as every NHL city does. They booed Crosby through the Conn Smythe presentation, then the actual awarding of the Cup and even when the captain hoisted the trophy and took it for a lap.

Last summer, the fans in San Jose, even those in teal, warmly applauded that. Same goes for the Penguins' ceremony in Detroit in 2009. And for that matter, Pittsburgh extended the same respect for the Red Wings the previous year at the Civic Arena.

The idea of Nashville as some passionate hockey market was blown to bits with this scene, never mind all the garbage that was embarrassingly thrown to the ice after Carl Hagelin's empty-netter. But that'll take time to correct, just as it did in Miami years ago with the plastic rats.

What can be done right away is setting a more upbeat overall tone for what should be the NHL's most dignified moment. And again, I'd begin by dumping Bettman -- in every way, but we're just talking about this right now -- and having a Hockey Hall of Famer, a true legend of the game, present the Cup.

Wayne Gretzky would love to do it, if only because there are cameras and microphones present.

How about Bobby Orr?

Or Lemieux, if the Final doesn't involve his Penguins?

Just a thought.