Faceoff Factor

Finally Home

C.J. "Stoosh" Jiuliante | National Hockey League

Sep 21, 08:36 PM | Hype this story!

The temperature read about 83 degrees on Thursday afternoon here in Pittsburgh, but as I walked into Mellon Arena that evening, it began to feel a lot more like winter. The Penguins hosted their Town Hall Meeting, a preseason event that’s become a bit of a regular thing over the last four or five years. In short, it’s an excuse for the Pens to throw a pre-season thank you towards the season ticket holders by inviting them down to Mellon Arena and engaging them in a question and answer session with team officials and players.

The Penguins began hosting this event in the seasons leading up the NHL lockout that followed the 2003-04 season. At that point, the franchise’s present and future was embroiled in a great deal of uncertainty. The economic structure of the pre-lockout NHL made it difficult for the Pens to retain many of their star players and the team was in the midst of trimming payroll down to fractions of what some higher-revenue teams were spending. And the future of the team in Pittsburgh was in even worse shape as plans to negotiate a deal for a new arena for the team and the city of Pittsburgh were adrift in a sea of political mess. To their credit, the organization used things like this town meeting to reach out to their fans, come clean about the trimming of the payroll (which is something the baseball franchise over on Federal Street has never done), and make sure that the fans understood a plan for the short and long-term future of the team was in place.

Imagine that…a pro sports team that took steps to show it gives a damn about the people buying tickets.

It worked so well, they kept doing it.

So it was that I walked into Mellon Arena for my first experience at these town hall meetings. Speaking to the masses were Penguins CEO Ken Sawyer, team president David Morehouse and general manager Ray Shero. After they fielded some questions, the evening wrapped up with a Q&A session with Sidney Crosby, Marc-Andre Fleury, Ryan Whitney, Colby Armstrong and Jordan Staal. In a nutshell, here’s what we learned:

- The new arena will borrow heavily from the likes of the NHL arenas in Minnesota, Buffalo and Phoenix. The Xcel Energy Center in Minnesota is considered one of the best arenas in the league; I don’t think the team can go wrong using this as a basis for the new building.

- The new arena will likely have only two levels, but these levels will wrap all the way around the rink as opposed to the current setup that isolates the E and F balconies at the ends of the ice.

- The Jumbotron will be bigger and you will be watching replays, blooper reels and Val Porter from DVE in high def.

- There will be a bar and some restaurants that will have full views of the ice. In addition, all of the concourses will be open so people in line for concessions will be able to turn around and look directly out onto the ice surface.

- More seats; bigger seats; more legroom.

- With the revenue structure set up for the remainder of the team’s tenure at Mellon Arena and then at the new arena, Sawyer and Morehouse both expressed their opinions that the Penguins will find themselves among the upper reaches of the salary cap in terms of team payroll. Conversely, every effort will be made to keep ticket prices in accordance with the NHL’s middle of the road.

- Ray Shero tempered expectations of a Stanley Cup this year by stating emphatically that this team’s main goal right now is to make it back to the playoffs.

The Q&A session from the players was particularly entertaining.

Questions about predictions and expectations for this year were generally met with relatively clichéd responses, but most of the players opened up quite a bit.

Jordan Staal told us that Mark Recchi makes a really good steak.

Ryan Whitney said Sergei Gonchar generally doesn’t put his equipment on until about five minutes before warmups, and then downs a cup or two of coffee before hitting the ice.

Marc-Andre Fleury became a goalie because he likes to dive around a lot and he “sucks to score goals.” He also has no real idea why he wears the bright yellow pads.

We learned Ryan Whitney and Colby Armstrong want white-out nights.

The night ended on a bit of an emotional note as well. Sid fielded the final question and was asked about his thoughts on Pittsburgh and if they played any sort of role when he was negotiating his contract extension. He took his time with the answer – you can usually tell when someone is just trying to break out a cliché – and mentioned that it was nice to know that some of the other guys will be sticking around as well. He paused for a split-second and seemed to get a little bit choked as he continued, “Certainly this is a place where I can call home, and it’s like a second home…so I really enjoy my time here, and the way you all have taken us in…” That was about as far as he got because the place erupted in a standing ovation as the other four players came up to join him to thank the crowd and to allow Marc-Andre Fleury to do his best Jean Girard impression from “Talladega Nights”.

Maybe it’s not worth reading much into, but sports fans in Pittsburgh are insecure. If we get a player of superstar caliber for any of our teams, we hardly begin to enjoy watching him play in a Pittsburgh jersey before the inevitable “well, he’s gone as soon as he can get more money” comment gets thrown around. So perhaps it meant a lot for these fans to hear Crosby say that because I’m not sure we’ve ever had someone like him before here.

On top of that, Penguins fans have been put through the wringer these last couple of years because of the arena situation, so perhaps that was even more important in light of what we all endured last season with the team coming so close to leaving town. Pens fans have been on edge about the future of this team here in Pittsburgh for almost five years now, and there were times when I walked in that arena during the last couple of seasons and wondered how much longer we’d really be watching this team skate its home games in Pittsburgh.

How fitting it was then that it all came together yesterday. Yesterday happened to be the day that the Pens officially signed the lease on the new arena and guaranteed that they would be here through the 2040 hockey season. Once and for all, this team is finally here to stay. Before I left the arena I took one more good look around. Sid hit the nail on the head. It really was home.