Up Close With The Pittsburgh Sports Report
Penguins GM Ray Shero

New Penguins' general manager Ray Shero comes to the job with great credentials, a proven eye for talent and a huge challenge as he tries to resurrect the team from the bottom of the NHL standings with a limited budget. But the son of former Flyers' coaching legend Fred Shero has one thing going for him: a nucleus of good young talent that includes a frightening 1-2 punch at center with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.

As training camp moved along last month, PSR Hockey Editor Bob Grove talked with the longtime assistant GM about his thoughts now that he's finally sitting behind the big desk.

PSR: Your father was certainly a unique hockey guy: part philosopher, part psychologist, part coach. Is there some part of your management style that can be traced to him?

SHERO: Certainly the way he dealt with players. He was a real players' coach. I certainly like to communicate with the staff and with the players. In terms of my management style or philosophy, I think a lot was taken from working with a real good guy in David Poile. Everybody's got their own style, the way you deal with things. I like input from the staff. You hire people to do a job, and you certainly want their ideas. I like people when they bring me, generate ideas on their own and bring them to me instead of me asking all the questions. But from my father's standpoint. . . hopefully I'm a person who treats my staff well and with respect, and they want to work for me - just like players wanted to play for him.

PSR: Do you feel like this is the position you've been working your whole life to get?

RS: Actually, I thought I would be a center iceman (laughing). I started in the player agent business, and certainly I wanted to get on the team side eventually. It was a really good training ground for me, and when I got into management in 1993 (with Ottawa), that training, knowing the CBA, negotiating contracts, scouting, really came into play. Certainly there are a lot of good people in this league who aspire to be managers and haven't gotten that opportunity yet, so I'm fortunate. It's taken 14 years, but it was 14 years well spent, quite honestly.

PSR: We can all agree that when you look at this team's roster on paper, there are a lot of promising young players. Has that really been reinforced now that you've had a chance to watch them?

RS: With two guys in particular (smiling), for sure. But there are other good young players, but like everything, they all carry the same tag: potential. A lot of good young players never fill a team's aspirations or their own, so it's nice to have good young players, but realistically at some point the players have to get to where the team thinks they should be. It's a good young base, but the way the CBA is now, you only hold a player's rights for seven years. So it's not the old days of the big five-year plan, building through the draft, being patient. You want to have some of that, but the way the game is played now you have to use all available measures to build your team. The good young talent base here is a real good starting point. Outside of Malkin and Crosby, we have Fleury in goal, Whitney on defense. . . they've got talent, they've got potential and they're starting to realize it. But they're still kids.

PSR: Is it an advantage that guys like Fleury and Whitney, who might be more under the microscope on other teams, can grow up in the shadows, so to speak, with Crosby and Malkin around?

RS: The more you can surround them with good support players, role players, good people, the better off they're going to be. It's hard to be a young player in this league. It's a hard league, it's a lot of games, a lot of pressure. Some of these guys have been through quite a bit lot of losing, unfortunately, so the idea is to get them good support and let's start to win some hockey games here, really solidify it.

PSR: Going from next-to-last overall to being a playoff team is a huge challenge for any team. Is it even tougher under the new CBA?

RS: Everybody seems to re-tool every year now. After you miss the playoffs, you have the ability to re-tool if you're not blocked in financially or contract-wise. Here we didn't exactly re-tool. It's just building, and what I'm looking for shorter term. . . I want to keep a shorter term picture in perspective as well. Becoming a playoff team is everybody's goal. I wanted to build an organization off the ice which was strong and passionate, set a philosophy there, which I think we've done. Before you build the on-ice product, you have to build the off-ice product. The on-ice product is. . . what I'm looking for from the coaching staff and the players is improvement. Whether it's every week or every month, we want to improve. And we want to gather an identity for ourselves as a hockey team, how we're going to be to play against, what's going to be our. . . what is a Pittsburgh Penguin? When I see the Calgary Flames playing, I know what kind of team they are. When I see the Flyers, when I see Nashville, theres an identity with those teams. We've got to establish that. As a team trying to make a step here, we just have to continually get better. Wherever that's going to take us, I want to see improvement.