Thursday, December 14, 2006
By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
One week of presumed exactness separated the Penguins from a fateful political convulsion as they appeared on the ice against Philadelphia last night. They looked no worse for the anxiety, but there was more than one political consideration as the day-to-day countdown to a casino resolution began in earnest.
It wasn't by scheduling happenstance, for example, that county executive Dan Onorato spent enough time on local radio yesterday to get a master's in traffic reporting. His mission was clearly to cool tensions over the impending decision by the Gaming Control board, specifically in the event that Pittsburgh's sole casino license is awarded to one of Isle of Capri's competitors.
Meanwhile, Penguins owner-to-be Jim Balsillie was in Harrisburg for a second chat with the Gaming operatives, this time offering that Plan B "could be" the solution to the hockey club's long-term Pittsburgh stability if the $290 million for a new arena in the Isle of Capri package somehow doesn't hold sway. That represented something of a political softening, as the hockey club had pretty much regarded anything but an Isle of Capri victory as plunging the franchise directly into the ninth circle of hell.
No wonder a virulent strain of pessimism still cooks among Pittsburgh's ever-skittish hockey fans that any decision which would disappoint Isle of Capri next Wednesday will immediately trigger competing bids from moving companies anxious to help the Penguins vacate the region.
Stoking that uncertainty, and as a baseline for the public dialogue yesterday, Daniel Rothschild and Kenneth Doyno articulated in a muscular op-ed piece in your good morning Post-Gazette how the North Shore site proposed by Majestic Star, one of Isle of Capri's two casino rivals, "has remarkable advantages when it comes to influencing additional development" and "advances the grandest vision for our region's future."
Of course, Rothschild and Doyno are merely architects, urban designers, and teachers at Carnegie Mellon University's Urban Lab. It's not like they're packing the comprehensive expertise of, you know, hockey fans.
Fans prefer their politics a little more visual, a little more tangible, such as the who-gets-what of basic puck management. When Sidney Crosby took the Philadelphia Flyers' R.J. Umberger (the former Plum High School star) behind the net and just kind of left him there, throwing it into reverse and leaking back in front of the Philadelphia goal like a phantom, the audience inside the old Uptown barn had the kind of politics it came for.
Crosby backhanded one past beleaguered Flyers goalie Antero Niittymaki for the second Penguins goal in a one-minute span of the first period last night, triggering an 8-4 spanking that further separated the Atlantic Division rivals in just about every dimension, most particularly hope. The Penguins virtually bristle with promise, arena politics notwithstanding. The Flyers, clinging to a 40-year tradition of fists and fury and even a couple of long ago Stanley Cups, are 8-19-4 in Act II of the new NHL, their notable moments essentially limited to occasional criticisms of Sid the Kid.
Crosby torments Philadelphia even when the clock stops. Gliding innocently back toward a new between-the-benches location for between-periods interviews last night, he somehow drew a penalty from Flyers winger Todd Fedoruk, who gave him a shove after the horn just for the heck of it.
The Penguins did not score on the resulting power play that began with the second period, but scored on almost everything else on a night it appeared to be using a successful road trip to catapult toward the long winter with plans for consistent accomplishment.
Crosby, for one, was not going to allow an unplanned spasm of goaltender switching by Michel Therrien to curdle the club's concentration.
Jocelyn Thibault appeared in net for the Penguins as the second period began for reasons related to Marc-Andre Fleury's equipment, a kind of wardrobe malfunction without the nipple and without any lingering disruption. Fleury returned just before the six-minute mark of the second period, or smack in the middle of a sequence when Crosby was adding the second, third and fourth assists of another spectacular performance.
Just past the three-minute mark of the third period, Crosby added a fifth. Is this legal?
Maybe the Flyers should look into it.
In five games this season, Crosby has seven goals and eight assists against them, and in 13 career appearances against Philadelphia, he has 14 goals and 15 assists. Nearly a third of his 47 points this season are against Philadelphia.
Sid nearly added a sixth on a two-on-one as time was running out, as "Go Home Flyers" was getting its third chorus. Crosby came here through the ridiculous random politics of ping-pong balls, and the prospect of watching him through 10 or 15 years of brilliance, accompanied by the growing luminescence of Fleury and Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal, makes the next couple of weeks around here awfully compelling.
(Gene Collier can be reached at gcollier@post-gazette.com. )
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