Questionable Returns
Patrick Finding It Difficult To Get Equal Value In High Profile Trades
By Bob Grove

More than five years removed from bankruptcy, the Penguins long ago came to grips with the realities of their tenuous financial situation. It means making every decision with an eye on the budget. It means focusing an enormous amount of off-ice energy on two political landscapes - one in Pennsylvania, where an arena funding plan remains elusive, and the other in New York, where the NHL drifts ominously toward a work stoppage next September.

On the ice, it means casting off established stars, missing the playoffs and enduring painfully small crowds. It means remaking the team, which is never as simple as grabbing prospects in gut-wrenching trades, recalling draft picks from the AHL, plugging them into your lineup and shaking the mixture into a playoff participant.

The recent trade of Martin Straka to Los Angeles for defenseman Martin Strbak and forward Sergei Anshakov was the latest in a series of money-driven transactions. The Kings got a proven commodity while the Penguins got a 28-year-old defenseman drafted 10 years ago and a 19-year-old who may or may not reach the NHL.

The Penguins and general manager Craig Patrick have a plan for returning to NHL prominence, much of which rests on stockpiling talented youngsters through the draft and painful but necessary trades.

The selection of goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury with the No. 1 pick in 2003 is now the key to the rebuilding effort, and there is evidence to suggest good decision making in recent drafts. Patrick's recent major trades, however, haven't much fanned the rebuilding flames.

'There is some doubt about the quality of people they are getting back in these deals,' says Mike Brophy, senior writer for The Hockey News. 'And I say this with some reservation because Craig Patrick is a proven, smart GM. I just wonder if he's operating with one hand tied behind his back -

'Because salary is such a big issue right now, it's difficult to get equal value in return. I really think the Penguins have become the poster child for waiting for a new collective bargaining agreement, and most people in the hockey world want to see the Penguins succeed.'

Deals involving Straka, Jaromir Jagr (Kris Beech, Michal Sivek and Ross Lupaschuk from Washington), Darius Kasparaitis (Ville Nieminen and Rick Berry from Colorado) and Alexei Kovalev (Rico Fata, Mikael Samuelsson, Richard Lintner and Joel Bouchard from the Rangers) had the potential for the greatest returns.

Of the 11 players acquired, just six remain with the organization. Only Fata has made an impact, although Samuelsson was part of the trade that made drafting Fleury possible.

The players acquired in the Jagr trade, in particular, have been slow to find their niche. Beech, a former No. 7 overall pick, has spent most of this season in the AHL.

'I really thought Beech would be a player, but often times when you make these trades with young players involved, you're rolling the dice,' says Kevin Allen, hockey writer for USA Today. 'Craig is in a very, very difficult position. When everyone knows you're trying to trim salary, it's hard to get fair return.'

'When you're making these deals, you're not going to get everything you want,' Patrick says. 'You do the best you can. You're working off a list (of available players), there are probably four or five guys on the list, and you kind of have to figure out how to get the right mix. If you can't, you move on to the next team.'

Pierre McGuire, former Penguins' assistant coach and current lead analyst for Canada's TSN, says Pittsburgh is still paying for mistakes made in the mid-to-late 1990s.

'Everybody says the financial situation in Pittsburgh is allowing them not to compete. That's malarkey,' says McGuire. 'Before they traded Kovalev, Jagr and Straka, they made unbelievably bad decisions with younger players who weren't making big money.

'Trading Markus Naslund for Alek Stojanov; trading Patrick Lalime for Sean Pronger; trading Glen Murray for Ed Olczyk. These are deals where the return was ridiculous. Even going back to when they traded Straka to Ottawa for Troy Murray and Norm Maciver, they made very bad evaluations of their own young talent. Now they're trading established players and getting nothing in return. They traded Kovalev, Jagr and Straka and got Fata.'

Knowing when to pull the plug on a young player, Patrick admits, is more an art than a science.

'When you're trying to evaluate young people - it's hard to determine when the light's going to go on, when their game is going to fit where they should be,' he says. 'It happens to everybody at different ages.

'When you're trying to build an organization, you definitely agonize over every one of these circumstances. With young guys. . . you don't know. A guy may really start to show his game in the minors and come up here and take five steps back. Then you wonder if he'll ever get back up again. It's tough. Sometimes you have to be lucky. Sometimes you're not.'

After a run of poor first-round draft decisions that began with Chris Wells in 1994 and included Craig Hillier (1996) and Robert Dome (1997), Pittsburgh appears to have done well in recent drafts by selecting Konstantin Koltsov (1999), Brooks Orpik (2000) and Ryan Whitney (2002). The Penguins put five players in the World Junior Championships in 2003 and were poised to have seven in the 2004 tournament.

Boston College's Ben Eaves was a Hobey Baker runner-up last season, Harvard defenseman Noah Welch has drawn very good reviews and Koltsov, Ryan Malone, Tomas Surovy and Matt Murley have all reached the NHL.

'The Penguins have done much better,' says Kyle Woodlief, publisher of draft newsletter Red Line Report. 'Orpik is going to be a player, and Whitney has tons of potential. He has incredible passing skills - the passing skills of a guy who's 5-11 - and he's going to be a big man.'

Pittsburgh might also get the opportunity to add Alexandre Ovechkin, the Russian forward who is a lock to be drafted first overall this June. 'Now they need that flag-carrying forward,' says Allen. 'If there's ever a time to be bad, it's this year.'

Landing a lottery pick is not the stated plan for this season, but there's no denying it would fit nicely into the bigger picture Patrick is trying to paint.

'We were really hoping to get closer to September of 2004 with guys like Kovy and Marty in our lineup, but it didn't happen that way,' he said. 'It's a sad thing for the organization. But it enabled us to sit down and know where we're going. We're working with a five-year plan, and we feel we're close to three years into it, and in another year or two we're going to be there.'

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.