Fata Responding To More Ice Time
By Bob Grove

For a guy who was always on the fast track to success, Rico Fata seemed to be getting nowhere.

Fata had been a junior star with the London Knights of the Ontario Hockey League, a No. 6 overall selection by Calgary in the 1998 Entry Draft and a member of the silver medal-winning Canadian team at the 1999 World Junior Championships. The speedy forward was named to the AHL All-Rookie Team in 2000 and in the spring of 2001 helped Calgary's Saint John affiliate capture the Calder Cup.

But NHL success continued to elude him. Fata was claimed on waivers by the New York Rangers in October, 2001, and when he began last season with the Rangers' Hartford affiliate it was his fourth AHL stint. Even after a November recall to New York, he was a healthy scratch for seven of 12 games in December.

'There were things I had to learn to improve, and I always tried hard to find them,' says the Penguins' center. 'That was my problem. I was too impatient. I had to let things come to me.'

They started coming the minute Fata came to Pittsburgh last February in the Alexei Kovalev deal. The 6-0, 200-pound Fata, who had been playing seven minutes a night for New York, found himself playing nearly 18 minutes a game with the rebuilding Penguins.

This fall, new coach Eddie Olczyk hoped to build off Fata's strong finish by moving him back to his natural position at center. By the time Pittsburgh got through its first dozen games this season, it looked like a stroke of genius, Fata put up 11 points and scored seven goals to match his total from the first 100 games of his NHL career.

'We needed somebody to step up (at center), and he had it in his background,' says Olczyk. 'With his speed, if I could just get him to do more stops and starts and work on his defensive game in his own zone, I knew he would have the opportunity to succeed because he had played center almost his whole life.

'We needed him to be more of a north-south player than east-west. He needs to push people back, and with his speed he's very effective at doing that. Sometimes you can be too fast and get out of control, but I think he's really learned to do that.'

Controlling his natural urge to play the game at breakneck speed has been a turning point for Fata, but he believes it's all part of growing up. He's only 23, but Fata has come a long way since the day the Flames drafted him.

'I understand the game a little bit more,' he says. 'It's taken me since I was 18 years old to understand the game that little bit extra that it takes in the NHL, that's the maturity in the last five years. Knowing that I can't just rely on my speed, that you have to change, and whether you have one gear or two or three or five, I have to use them all to my best advantage.'

Fata has not only been centering the Penguins' No. 2 line, but playing the power play and killing penalties, and it's impossible to miss the intensity he brings to every shift.

'He's a really important guy now on the team,' says Aleksey Morozov. 'He has great speed, and he's really an energy guy. He is working everywhere, in the offensive zone, in the corners. . . he does a lot of work on the ice, and that's really good for our team.'

When it comes to explaining his early-season success, Fata downplays the position change and emphasizes instead the role he's been given. 'The important thing for me is I have a lot of confidence, being given an opportunity to succeed,' he said. 'Sometimes you don't get that opportunity.

'It doesn't take me much to get going. I'm a pretty intense person. I'm always motivated, trying to prove people wrong the last five years. That's been a big motivating factor in front of me. The coaches here have put their faith in me, and I don't want them to lose it. That's what I'm thinking about before every game.'

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.