Pittsburgh Penguins Hockey Team

Keeping their promise to get tougher, the Kings delivered a roundhouse to their roster and their fans Friday. Luc Robitaille, one of the most popular players in club history, was traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins for right wing Rick Tocchet and a second-round draft choice next year. While responsibility for the trade is being claimed by King General Manager Sam McMaster, insiders say the move contains the distinct fingerprints of Wayne Gretzky.

It's the game they played on rutted roads while the light faded and their toes grew numb, the scenario they imagined as kids in Slovakia, Sweden, Saskatchewan, Syosset, N.Y., Sverdlovsk, Russia, and Sault Ste. Marie, Canada. Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals, tonight at Joe Louis Arena, between the Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins. It's a shot at hockey immortality, to have your name inscribed on the Cup to be traced by envious eyes and timid fingertips.

One is the oldest coach in the NHL, the other among the youngest. One exudes enthusiasm, literally pinching himself to maintain his delight. The other agonizes over his role, a dark frown perpetually clouding his face. One says he wouldn't mind coaching another 35 years. The other won't commit beyond the end of the month. One is 60, the other 37. Figure out which one is which? Well, figure again.

The Pittsburgh Penguins weren't about to go quietly. After watching the Detroit Red Wings celebrate on their home ice a year ago, the Penguins this time held serve at home in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals rematch to record a 2-1 victory at Mellon Arena on Tuesday night. The win in front of 17,132 fans, most wearing white T-shirts and waving white towels, evened the best-of-seven series at 3-3 and set up a Game 7 showdown for the NHL championship in Detroit on Friday night.

He doesn't score goals, smash anybody into the boards or even wear skates. But he decides every regular-season game in the NHL, all 880 of them. Not the winners and losers. Just the opponents. Talk about thankless jobs. Meet Phil Scheuer, whose task it is to come up with the NHL schedule. Think of Scheuer as a juggler, if you can imagine a juggler trying to keep 22 balls in the air across two countries. And it's only going to get worse. Next season, there will be 24 teams in the league.

At 19, Czechoslovakian hockey player Jaromir Jagr didn't know what to make of America. He couldn't understand the language. He couldn't understand the traffic laws. And, he figured, he couldn't play in the NHL. At 20, he simply smiles and says, "What a country." He speaks well enough to communicate with the masses. He plays well enough to compete with the NHL's elite. And he drives fast enough to contend in the Indy 500.

PITTSBURGH -- The Pittsburgh Penguins' season was ticking away. Champagne was being delivered to the Detroit Red Wings' locker room at Joe Louis Arena and the Stanley Cup had been polished to a blinding shine. In the first defining moment for a young team, Maxime Talbot -- on the ice in place of goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, brought the Penguins even with 34.3 seconds left in the third period by scoring a tenacious, second-effort goal.

DETROIT -- It's not enough that the Detroit Red Wings have shut out the Pittsburgh Penguins twice, held them without a shot on goal for the first 12 minutes Monday and are making a mockery of a Stanley Cup finals that was supposed to win over millions of hockey neophytes. The Red Wings, 3-0 victors at Joe Louis Arena and owners of a 2-0 series lead, believe they can raise their game. That's not what the Penguins needed to hear as they try to avoid utter embarrassment Wednesday at Pittsburgh.

Mario Lemieux will take a significant step today toward owning and running the team he led to successive Stanley Cup championships in 1991-92. Lemieux, who retired in 1997 after winning the sixth scoring title of his brilliant 12-year career, will attend a hearing in Pittsburgh to present U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Bernard Markovitz a business plan designed to rescue the Penguins from Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Bernard Markovitz said Wednesday he is inclined to present the NHL's plan to break up the Penguins to the team's 200 creditors for a vote alongside competing plans, possibly June 24. Two other reorganization plans have been filed, both involving retired Penguin star Mario Lemieux. Under the first plan, which has the NHL's backing, Lemieux would be the managing partner of a group of nearly a dozen investors.

Marc-Andre Fleury's grin was visible through the slats of his mask, a smile as wide as the net he protected so staunchly when circumstances demanded he be as close to perfect as a goaltender can be. Fleury's resilience and skill in the Pittsburgh Penguins' 2-1 victory Tuesday at Mellon Arena are the reasons the Stanley Cup was returned to its packing case after it was polished instead of going home with the Red Wings.

The last coach to win a playoff series against the Detroit Red Wings takes pride in that distinction, and he should. With Detroit poised to win its second straight Stanley Cup championship tonight with a victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins at Mellon Arena, Randy Carlyle might hold on to that honor for a while. Carlyle's Ducks defeated the Red Wings in the 2007 Western Conference finals before defeating Ottawa to win the Cup.

The Penguins grew up Thursday, making the defending Stanley Cup champion Red Wings look old and spent in a game that might trigger the beginning of the end of Detroit's dynasty. The Penguins' young legs carried them to successful two-on-one rushes, a power-play goal and the first short-handed goal scored against Detroit in 20 playoff games this spring.

The Pittsburgh Penguins had enough of history repeating itself. Meeting the Detroit Red Wings in the Stanley Cup finals for the second year in a row, the Penguins had lost the first two games on the road before winning Game 3 at Mellon Arena -- just like last year. Consider history rewritten as instead of falling in Game 4 the way they did a year ago, the Penguins beat the Red Wings, 4-2. on Thursday night to even the best-of-seven series at 2-2. Game 5 will be Saturday night at Joe Louis Arena.

They had superstars block shots and support players score goals, meaning that the Pittsburgh Penguins essentially turned themselves inside out Tuesday to defeat the Detroit Red Wings and claw their way back into the Stanley Cup finals.

The Pittsburgh Penguins got themselves back into their Stanley Cup finals series against the Detroit Red Wings with a 4-2 victory in Game 3 at Mellon Arena on Tuesday night. The win, in front of a crowd of 17,123, cut the Red Wings' lead in the best-of-seven series to 2-1 with Game 4 on Thursday night in Pittsburgh. The Penguins are attempting to become just the fourth team in NHL history to rebound from an 0-2 deficit and win the Cup.

While the journey through the postseason has had some perilous moments, the defending champion New Jersey Devils are where they expected to be--in the Stanley Cup finals. Jason Arnott scored twice and the Devils inched closer to their third title since 1995 by defeating Mario Lemieux and his Pittsburgh Penguins, 4-2, Tuesday night to win the best-of-seven Eastern Conference final in five games.

The comeback the NHL never dared to dream for begins Wednesday night, and not even the man making it knows exactly what to expect. Mario Lemieux returns to the ice after a 3 1/2-year retirement, restoring some star power to what has been a largely faceless NHL since he and Wayne Gretzky quit. Lemieux's return would be dramatic and virtually unprecedented even if there weren't the added element of the sport's first hall of fame player-turned-owner transforming himself back into a player.

PITTSBURGH -- The Pittsburgh Penguins' season was ticking away. Champagne was being delivered to the Detroit Red Wings' locker room at Joe Louis Arena and the Stanley Cup had been polished to a blinding shine. In the first defining moment for a young team, Maxime Talbot -- on the ice in place of goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, brought the Penguins even with 34.3 seconds left in the third period by scoring a tenacious, second-effort goal.

DETROIT -- Pittsburgh Penguins General Manager Ray Shero took a moment to ponder the question. Had his team come of age Monday with the 4-3, triple-overtime victory that sent the Stanley Cup finals back to Pittsburgh on Wednesday for a sixth game, a performance built on resilience and pluck and the unflappable goaltending of Marc-Andre Fleury? "I know the manager did," he said, smiling.