Pittsburgh Penguins

Team information

• Inaugural season: 1967
• Home arena: PPG Paints Arena, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• Owners: Ron Burkle and Mario Lemieux
• Team colors: Black, gold, and white

Overview

The Pittsburgh Penguins are an American hockey team in the National Hockey League (NHL). They play in the Metropolitan Division in the Eastern Conference. The team became part of the league in 1967 during its first round of expansion after 1942. They were the second NHL team to play in Pittsburgh. The first was the Pittsburgh Pirates, who were part of the league from 1925–1930 during a first wave of expansion. During the 1970s and 1980s, the team’s powerful “Century Line” helped the team make the playoffs for the League’s championship nearly every year. Then, in the mid-1980s, they signed an outstanding forward and future team owner named Mario Lemieux. Later, they signed Czech forward Jaromir Jagr. They won several Stanley Cups during the Lemieux/Jagr era, but faced financial struggles in the late 1990s that resulted in bankruptcy. Lemieux and businessman Ronald Burkle bought the team and revived it, and the next two decades would see the rise of several key players, including forwards Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin and goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, resulting in multiple Stanley Cup titles.

History

The NHL began with four Canadian teams playing in Hamilton, Montreal, Ottawa, and Quebec, and then expanded into the United States, adding teams first in Boston and then in New York. Due to financial troubles in the United States Amateur Hockey Association in 1925, that league’s Pittsburgh team, the Pittsburgh Yellow Jackets, was sold to businessman James F. Callahan. After he was granted an NHL franchise, he changed the team’s name to Pirates to match the city’s baseball team.

The team experienced moderate success, but the Great Depression led to a drop in attendance and financial troubles for the team beginning in 1929. The Pirates moved to Philadelphia in 1930. However, this first foray into the NHL for Pittsburgh hockey resulted in two key changes to how the game is played: the development of player lines, or groups that play together, and the move to making line changes while play is underway. Previously, teams played their top players until they needed a break, and player changes were only made during stoppages in play.

It would be 37 years before the Penguins came into being during the NHL’s next wave of expansion in 1967, which doubled the size of the league to twelve teams. At first, the team was made up mostly of minor league players from a defunct American Hockey League (AHL) franchise, the Pittsburgh Hornets. The team’s name, Penguins, was chosen in a contest. It was suggested because the original arena where they played—the Civic Arena—was nicknamed “The Igloo.” The arena, the first in the world to have a retractable roof, had a huge domed igloo-like top. This early team wore jerseys that were two shades of blue and white. They changed to black, gold, and white on January 30, 1980, to be in line with the city’s other sports franchises.

The early years were a struggle, as the league set rules in place to favor the existing “Original Six” teams. One bright spot during this era was a young forward named Michel Briere. He led rookie scoring in 1970 and was poised to become a force on the team and in the NHL before tragedy struck. Shortly after the end of the team’s season in 1970, Briere suffered brain trauma after he was ejected from his car in an accident. He died on April 13, 1971, having never regained consciousness. No Penguins player ever wore his number—21—again and it was formally retired in 2001.

The Penguins of the 1970s and early 1980s grew in strength and reputation. Powered by the “Century Line” of Syl Apps, Lowell MacDonald, and Jean Pronovost, the team qualified for post-season play regularly, though they had little success once they made the playoffs. However, the team nearly left the city in 1975 after it ran into financial problems and was forced into bankruptcy. Businessman Edward J. DeBartolo bought the team and kept it in Pittsburgh.

By the 1980s, the Century Line had retired or been traded and the team struggled. There were glimmers of hope in players such as forwards Pierre Larouche and Rick Kehoe and defenseman Randy Carlyle. However, at the end of the 1983–1984 season, the team was in last place.

According to league rules, the last-place team gets the first-round pick in the next entry draft. The 1984 draft featured an outstanding young player, Mario Lemieux. Lemieux was Canadian Major Junior League player of the year and most valuable player of the year and held many other records for his play in the Junior League. The last-place Penguins chose him with their first round pick. Public accusations were made that the team leadership took deliberate steps, such as sitting better players and trading others, to finish in last place and be positioned to draft Lemieux. Penguin management denied the accusations.

Lemieux wasted no time making his presence felt, scoring on his first shot in his first shift as a Penguin in 1985. He racked up a number of other awards that year, including most valuable player of the all-star game—the first rookie to ever do so—and the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year. He would go on to play some or all of seventeen seasons with the team, hampered first by a back problem followed by a diagnosis of Hodgkin’s disease that sidelined him for an entire season, and finally by atrial fibrillation, which ultimately lead to his retirement in 2006.

Lemieux’s on-ice performance and dedication would have been enough to make him a legend in the city and the league. However, in the midst of his own medical issues, he made a move that further endeared him to the team’s fans. In 1995, the team was in such severe financial trouble that it filed for bankruptcy. Lemieux kept the team in Pittsburgh by offering to turn the $30 million he was owed by the team into equity and assuming ownership.

While Lemieux was out during the 1994–1995 season, a young Czech superstar rose to prominence. Jaromir Jagr—dubbed “Mario Jr.” by fans who rearranged the letters in his first name—was soon setting records and leading the team to regular season wins that did not translate into results in the playoffs. They did make it to the Eastern Conference semi-finals in 2001, after Lemieux returned from his first retirement and the team traded for the surprisingly successful goaltender Johan “Moose” Hedberg.

This was the team’s lasts glimpse of greatness until 2007, despite having high draft picks that added goalie Marc-Andre Fleury and forwards Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby. They lost in the finals in 2007 but were becoming a powerhouse once again. They won the Cup in 2009, beating the Detroit Red Wings four games to three. The team recorded strong performances over the next few seasons but failed to advance to the Stanley Cup final round again until 2015–2016, when they beat the San Jose Sharks four games to two. They maintained their championship status the following season, when they beat the Nashville Predators four games to two to win the Cup again, becoming the first team to repeat since the Red Wings did it in 1998.

These last championships were the first for the Penguins in their new home. In 2010, the team moved into a new $321 million building, the Consol Energy Center. The stadium became known as the PPG Paints Arena in 2016 after the Pittsburgh-based company PPG Industries bought naming rights.

Notable players

The name Lemieux is almost synonymous with the Penguins, and the six-foot four-inch, 230 pound right shooting center complied an impressive amount of awards during his seventeen seasons with the team. He had ten 100-point seasons and in 915 career games, he scored 690 goals and 1,033 assists, becoming the first Penguin to score more than 1,000 points. Lemieux’s teams won the Stanley Cup in 1991 and 1992, and he received the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player in the cup series both years.

Jagr, the Czech-born left-shooting right winger, played with the Penguins for eleven seasons between 1990 and 2001. He holds dozens of records for both the Penguins and the NHL, some of which include his play on other teams. He played 806 games as a Penguin and became the second player to score 1,000 career points with the team.

Goalie Fleury was only the third goalie in NHL history to be chosen as a first draft pick. He was instrumental in the team’s 2016 and 2017 championships despite battling two concussions during the 2015–2016 season. Fleury was selected by the Las Vegas Golden Knights in the 2017 expansion draft.

Russian-born center Malkin was the team’s first-round pick in 2004. He joined the team in 2006 after resolving issues with his Russian team and immediately made an impact. “Geno,” as he is known, scored goals in each of his first six games, becoming only the second player in NHL history to do so. He was part of the Stanley Cup teams in 2009, 2016, and 2017, earning the Conn Smythe Trophy in 2009. Twice he’s been the league’s leading scorer (2008–2009 and 2011–2012) and had three 100-point seasons.

Crosby, the team’s 2005 first round, first overall pick, was only twenty-one when he captained the Penguins to the Stanley Cup in 2009, making him the youngest captain in Cup history. Still active as of the 2019–2020 season, he had more than 1,200 career points and had been part of two more championship teams. He holds team records for most assists (63) and points (102) by a rookie as well as most games played; most playoff games played; most playoff goals, assists, and points; and most regular season overtime-winning goals.

Bibliography

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