Pens great Francis headed to Hall

By Joe Starkey
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, November 11, 2007



The march of the Penguins continues Monday night in Toronto, when Ron Francis is inducted into the Hall of Fame.

It's almost comical to consider how many legendary hockey figures -- or just plain great ones -- called Mellon Arena home in the past 16 years, almost as if Pittsburgh was a required stop on the road to immortality.

The Francis induction will make it 10 men intimately connected with the club who've been enshrined since 1991. That doesn't include a sure-fire Hall of Famer in Jaromir Jagr and a couple of prodigious young talents, Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, who've extended this town's miraculous run of hockey prosperity.

"It is amazing -- unbelievable, really," says Penguins scout Kevin Stevens, who was a pretty fair player himself.

The twist on the Penguins' run of hall of famers is that most did not spend the bulk of their careers here. Other franchises have sent multiple men from a single era to halls of fame, obviously, but when you think of, say, the '70s Steelers, you're talking about players and builders who spent their careers in Pittsburgh.

With the Penguins, you're talking about men who arrived nearly simultaneously from outposts such as Edmonton, Calgary, Buffalo, Hartford and Long Island, like famous scientists summoned to work on a grand experiment.

"A lot of it is a tribute to Craig Patrick," Stevens said. "I could never figure him out, but he was a genius the way he put those teams together."

Stevens, as passionate as anyone on this topic, agreed to lend a quick thought on each of the Penguins' Terrific 10 ...

Scotty Bowman (inducted in 1991) -- "Great bench coach, so intelligent. Not the most well-liked type of guy with the players (laughs), but what a bench coach."

Mario Lemieux (1997) -- "The ultimate player. A lot tougher than people think he is. They don't realize what he went through."

Patrick (2001) -- "He knew us inside and out."

Larry Murphy (2004) -- "One of the most underrated players ever."

Herb Brooks (2006) -- "I didn't play for him, but I watched him work. He got in people's minds, got more out of them than they knew they had."

Bob Johnson (1992) -- "He was 24-hours-a-day hockey. If there were 25, it would have been 25. A great teacher. You could lose, 10-0, and he'd find something good about it."

Francis -- "You didn't realize how great he was until you played with him. He'd see things happen before they happened. One time I scored in double overtime against Washington on a play I'd missed two weeks earlier. Ronnie faked a slap shot and slid it over, and I missed. He said, 'Be ready for that, it'll happen again.' It sure did."

Bryan Trottier (1997) -- "I'd watched him a lot when I was growing up. One of the greatest teammates you could have. He fit right in on a third line with Jagr; helped everybody become better."

Paul Coffey (2004) -- "Probably the best skater I've ever seen. He taught us a lot about how to prepare with the way he worked out before and after games."

Joe Mullen (2000) -- "One of the best pure scorers I've seen. It would take me seven shots; it took him one -- and I don't think you could find a better guy."

You'd be hard-pressed to find a luckier franchise, too.


Joe Starkey is a sports writer for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. He can be reached at jstarkey@tribweb.com