The season was barely two weeks old when the Penguins visited
New York and beat the Rangers 1-0. Pittsburgh took just 19 shots
in that game and, while protecting its lead in the third period,
allowed New York only seven. Afterward the Rangers were
bewildered. "That sure didn't look like the Penguins out there,"
said New York goalie Mike Richter.
The freewheeling blur of gold-and-black sweaters that opposing
goaltenders had come to dread has been retired along with Mario
Lemieux. From 1984-85 to '96-97 the Lemieux-led Penguins were a
defensively disinterested, offensively awesome assemblage that
made fans' ears ring from hearing the goal horns blare so often.
These days they are a chippy band of neutral-zone trappers who
through Sunday had allowed the fourth fewest goals in the
league. Last Saturday, Tom Barrasso had 51 saves in the
Penguins' 4-2 home win against the Stanley Cup champion Red
Wings. That victory pushed Pittsburgh's record to 29-15-10,
second-best in the Eastern Conference and, surprisingly, three
points better than at the same time last season.
"We used to have so much talent that we didn't need a system,"
says Pittsburgh superstar right wing Jaromir Jagr. "But we lost
Mario, lost Petr Nedved [a sniper who is an unsigned restricted
free agent] and had to start playing a defensive style."
The metamorphosis began the day new coach Kevin Constantine and
his four assistants strode, clipboards in hand, into the
Penguins' training camp last September. A former high school
geometry teacher who spent last season as the X's and O's
assistant to Pierre Page in Calgary, Constantine set up
blackboards, played videotape, supervised on-ice drills and
behaved "as if it were our first hockey practice ever," says
defenseman Darius Kasparaitis. "He taught us how to play offense
and defense."
The lessons are elementary: The Penguins have been instructed to
force teams to shoot from the outside (instead of from prime
scoring position down low), eschew risky passes and work hard
every shift, with and without the puck. Also, everyone must play
defense.
Pittsburgh has yielded 46 fewer goals than it had at this point
last year (the NHL's second-best improvement in that area), and
had scored 53 fewer as well. Yet if you label the Penguins'
system "defensive," Constantine gets defensive. "We play two-way
hockey," he says. "We work as much on offense as we do on
defense. I just want sound fundamentals and discipline."
He's getting it from everyone. Jagr was among 18 Penguins
skating hard through an optional practice last Friday, 14 hours
after Pittsburgh had beaten the Bruins in the second of
back-to-back road games. Despite the Penguins' new style, Jagr
was in his customary place among the league's top scorers—tied
for the NHL lead with 63 points through Sunday—largely because
he is the best one-on-one player alive. "I liked it when we
played a more offensive style," he says. "But I also like
winning. The style we're playing is why we're winning."
Issue date: February 9, 1998
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