Raising The Bar
Pens Positioned For More Success
By Bob Grove

Now that the Penguins have learned first-hand the difference between the regular season and the Stanley Cup playoffs, yet another stark lesson awaits when training camp begins in four months: yesterday's expectation levels are long gone.

As general manager Ray Shero was fitting new pieces to his new team last summer, it was generally assumed that Pittsburgh had hit rock bottom and was poised to begin the long trek back to NHL respectability. Both turned out to be true, although the rest of the league was left gasping at the speed with which the Penguins completed the trip.

That's why it will be de rigueur for hockey people far and wide to predict another 100-point season and another run at the Atlantic Division title for the Penguins in 2007-08. After all, shouldn't a team blessed with the best player in the game and a handful of special talents, all of them looking forward to their mid-20s, get better?

If only it were that easy. Wouldn't scouting and coaching be delightfully simple occupations if young hockey players improved season by season, building predictably on the talents and character they've already revealed, the line graph of their future plotting out from bottom left to top right with mathematical precision?

In most cases, of course, it doesn't happen that way. A young player's progress can be derailed by any number of factors - a coaching change, an injury, a trade, complacency. Similarly, a young team's improvement is hardly guaranteed. If the Penguins are going to take another step - or given their recent pace another couple of steps - forward next season, they will have to embrace the challenge of living up to the remarkable promise they displayed this season.

And that's the good news about the Penguins. This team seems capable of meeting that challenge.

Of course coach Michel Therrien's team will have to be stronger, quicker and more physical. That shouldn't be a problem for a team that mustered the fourth-largest single-season improvement in NHL history largely from within. Shero's two biggest off-season acquisitions last summer, forward Nils Ekman and defenseman Mark Eaton, were each limited to less than half a season by injuries. Newcomer Ronald Petrovicky also played less than half the season, and Gary Roberts was around for only 19 of the 82 regular-season games that wound up constituting the second-best campaign in team history.

More importantly, however, the Penguins will have to deliver the intangibles: the nightly focus, the desire to be better, the determination to build for a longer playoff run. But this part of the equation shouldn't cause Shero and Therrien any sleepless nights, either, because their team showed an amazing amount of character during the 2006-07 season.

Therrien will have an important role in pushing his team to be better, but he has an inimitable ally in Sidney Crosby, who should be named captain before the puck drops on opening night. Nobody on this Pittsburgh team has more right to rest a bit on his laurels than the 19-year-old from Nova Scotia, the youngest scoring champion in NHL history. But, of course, nobody on this Pittsburgh team will outwork Crosby over the summer - just as nobody outworks him in the course of a game, broken foot or no.

Crosby isn't about to allow the Penguins to stagnate.

But Shero has some delicate work ahead of him this summer as he tries to fill the gaps between where the Penguins are and where they want to be. Signing Therrien to a contract extension should be the easy part, because Therrien almost certainly will be one of the three final candidates for the Jack Adams Trophy as coach of the year and deserves more security than that afforded by the lone year left on his contract at season's end.

Shero will talk to Crosby's agents about a long-term extension that could take Sid's annual base salary from $850,000 toward $8 million. Even if ownership pushes the Penguins' payroll from the mid-$30 million range and puts it closer to a new salary cap that might exceed $45 million, Shero's financial planning will be difficult.

Ryan Whitney, who blossomed into the sixth-highest scoring defenseman in the NHL last season, is due a large raise this summer, when fellow restricted free agents Colby Armstrong, Maxime Talbot, Michel Ouellet and Erik Christensen must also be signed. Goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, whose improvement was absolutely critical to the Penguins' success, will need a new contract next summer. Then, in the summer of 2009, Jordan Staal and Evgeni Malkin will take their turn.

Shero has also expressed an interest in re-signing unrestricted free agents Roberts and Mark Recchi. Roberts, the 41-year-old who hits with more force than most forwards in the league, will certainly want a two-year commitment from the Penguins. He earned $2.2 million last season and tons of respect from a young team that could benefit from his continued presence in the dressing room.

But that's not all. If unrestricted free agents Josef Melichar, Rob Scuderi and Alain Nasreddine are not re-signed, the expected upgrade of the defensive corps might be have to be more extensive - even with Kris Letang likely to earn a roster spot. If backup goaltender Jocelyn Thibault leaves in search of a No. 1 job again, Shero will also be in the market for his replacement.

And we haven't even gotten to adding the missing pieces that seem obvious: a proven scorer to play alongside Crosby and increase his production at even strength; one or two proven defensemen, at least one of them competent at playing a more physical game; and perhaps a third-line center who is proficient at winning faceoffs.

It's going to be a busy summer. The Penguins should benefit from being a desirable stop for free agents who - rightly - see this team as one with a bright future. Not simply because it's a team with a bunch of very talented kids, but because it's a talented team that seems bent on getting better.