NHL Power Ratings
Bob Grove's Team Rankings
By Bob Grove

In October, nothing is in greater supply around the National Hockey League than optimism. Players will successfully rebound from injuries. Rookies will make surprising impacts. Off-season moves will work with stunning precision. Heck, the Atlanta Thrashers are talking respectability.

In the months leading up to the 2003-04 season, the dormant notion of the Penguins reaching the Stanley Cup playoffs has been unabashedly revived by Mario Lemieux & Co. The team is in the midst of rebuilding their roster but refuse to lower their sights to meet the preseason gaze of most everyone else around the league.

'We don't care about the rest of the hockey world,' Lemieux said last month. 'Everybody's picking us to finish 30th. That's fine. And that's something that we talked about... all that matters is the coaching staff and the organization and the trainers and the players are all in this together. We know what we have to do, and I think we'll surprise a lot of people.'

Lemieux, who turns 38 five days before the Oct. 10 season opener against Los Angeles, has been on both sides of the talent equation long enough to know there's little point in empty rhetoric even with tickets to sell. So it was also significant that six weeks earlier, he had given the Penguins' goals for this season only one qualification.

'I'm not sure we can compete for the Cup,' Lemieux said, 'but we'll be out there competing every night. Our goal should be to make the playoffs this year we feel we have the team to do it.'

While every club is right to challenge itself, most observers believe the Penguins will reach the post-season only through a cosmic collision of fate, providence, karma, luck, chance and good backchecking.

They are 30 games under .500 over the past two seasons, missing the playoffs and finishing with a lottery pick both times. Their payroll will be among the NHL's lowest. New coach Eddie Olczyk has no experience in the job. They will be counting on several young players to perform at levels they have never before approached.

If Pittsburgh is to climb out of the NHL basement and begin making its way back to the middle of the pack no small achievement this season a myriad of things will have to go right. Two of the most important: the players need to make their age dynamic work for them, and Olczyk must successfully install and sell a system designed to make the Penguins better defensively.

Lemieux, who is embracing his role as a mentor for the team's young players, will have plenty of help from forwards Kelly Buchberger (36), Mike Eastwood (36), Martin Straka (31), Steve McKenna (30) and Brian Holzinger (30), and defensemen Marc Bergevin (38) and Drake Berehowsky (31).

'The guys we picked up this summer, Buchberger and Eastwood and Marc coming back, that's why we got the experience,' Lemieux said. 'We know it's going to be a tough year for all of us. We're very optimistic we're going to have a good year, but every team has to go through some ups and downs.'

Their experience will be particularly important when things go wrong, as they repeatedly did over the past two seasons during seven winless streaks of seven games or more.

'All players get so emotional during the season,' says Buchberger, 'and sometimes the younger guys really get down on themselves. When things are tough you want to bring them up and make them as positive as possible and show them better days are on the way.'

Says Olczyk, 'There are going to be tough times, no doubt about it. What's important is that we show our young players how to react to it.'

Olczyk spent training camp evaluating many players under the age of 26 who had yet to brand themselves as NHL regulars. The exceptions are Josef Melichar (24), who will join Dick Tarnstrom (28), Michal Rozsival (25) and perhaps Patrick Boileau (28) on defense (pending evaluation of another injury to Melichar's left shoulder suffered in camp); goaltender Sebastien Caron (23), who signed a four-year deal this summer; and virtual roster locks Rico Fata (23) and Matt Bradley (25), both forwards.

The players on the borderline included defensemen Dan Focht (25), Robert Scuderi (24), Brooks Orpik (23) and Ross Lupaschuk (22); and forwards Eric Meloche (27), Matt Murley (23), Milan Kraft (23), Ramzi Abid (23), Ryan Malone (23), Michal Sivek (22), Kris Beech (22), Konstantin Koltsov (22), Guillaume Lefebvre (22) and Tomas Surovy (22).

'We're probably one of the youngest teams in the league on paper,' says Fata. 'We're all young and chomping at the bit to make the team and make a name for ourselves in the NHL.'

Therein lies the reciprocal value of having relatively fresh faces on the roster. These younger players will bring enthusiasm to the ice that should benefit their older teammates.

'I do like coming to the rink every day, but when you see younger guys and the way they work,' says Bergevin, 'you feel their energy and it spreads around the room.'

Agrees Holzinger, 'When you get a bunch of guys who have that youthful enthusiasm... the guys who have been around will try to feed off that.'

While this kind of chemistry will evolve at its own pace, Olczyk needs complete and quick compliance with a system that will value speed, forechecking and aggressiveness as well as age-old basics without the puck. The Penguins last season allowed 30.9 shots per game, the league's fifth-highest total, and 255 goals, the league's third-highest total.

'The system that we're going to be able to play will help out any deficiencies that we have in (depth),' he said. 'It's going to be team defense, and we can't leave our defense... hang them out to dry. It's pure and simple.'

Solid goaltending will, of course, be integral to Olczyk's efforts. The Penguins, however, were left with three unproven goaltenders after trading Johan Hedberg. Caron has just 24 NHL games to his credit; Jean-Sebastien Aubin (26) was placed on waivers late last season; and No. 1 pick Marc-Andre Fleury (18) was trying to win a spot and avoid a return to his junior team with impressive quickness and a simple approach.

'When I go on the ice, I just try to do my best and have fun, too,' he says. 'Whatever happens off the ice, I'll just deal with it and go one day at a time.'

None of Olczyk's prospective goaltenders is particularly adept at handling the puck, which will complicate matters. 'That's one part of the game I really feel we need improvement on,' says assistant coach Lorne Molleken, who will work with the goaltenders.

While the Penguins have defensive challenges ahead, they also must develop some scoring depth, although Lemieux believes that will come as an outgrowth of aggressively pursuing the puck.

'With the system we're trying to (play), having a lot of pressure when we have a chance, creating turnovers... I think we'll create a lot more offense than we did the last couple of years,' he said.

Olczyk was also hoping to solve the scoring problems Pittsburgh's 189 goals last season were the league's fifth-lowest total by stressing the need for his forwards to get familiar with the slot.

'We've got to go to the net, and that's what he's been telling us right from the first practice,' says Straka, who could open the season on a line with Lemieux and Aleksey Morozov (26). 'You have to be around the net and get those rebounds and be dirty around the net that's how you're going to score goals in this league.'

PSR Senior Writer Bob Grove has been covering the Penguins since 1981 and currently serves as a regular co-host on the Penguins Radio Network.