Kerstin Chambers pulls a printed shirt from one of three screen printing machines Thursday at IbisTek Apparel in Penn Township. The company is printing T-shirts that will be handed out to each ticket holder at tonight's Pittsburgh Penguins playoff game against the New York Rangers at Mellon Arena. That's 17,496 white XL shirts with a Penguins Playoff logo on the front. Penguins players requested the home whiteout at the game.

PENN TWP — A little Butler County know-how and hard work will play a role in tonight's Pittsburgh Penguins second-round playoff game against the New York Rangers at Mellon Arena.

IbisTek Apparel at 496 Pittsburgh Road put every screening machine and all 45 employees to work Thursday to print 17,496 white T-shirts with a small Penguins logo.

Chris Bardakos, IbisTek's vice president of sales and marketing, said the company expected to have the job done in about eight hours, making about 70 dozen shirts an hour.

The shirts, ordered by the Penguins' marketing team on Wednesday, fulfills the hockey players' request for a home whiteout — a game during which all Penguins fans wear white shirts.

The whiteout game tradition began with the Winnepeg Jets, a former NHL team, whose fans wore all white to big games.

The idea has caught on with fans of other sports including the NFL and NBA, but among the most successful have been whiteout games held at Penn State University's Beaver Stadium against football rivals Ohio State, Michigan and Notre Dame.

<table width="300" height="275" border="0" align="right" valign="top" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td><embed src="/assets/mov/BE44433425.MOV " width="320" height="250" autostart="true" loop="false" ></embed></td></tr><tr><td align="center"><a href="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/" target="_blank"><span class="style11">Requires Quicktime Media Player </a><br><font size="1" face="Tahoma, Times New Roman">Video by Brandon Gerthoffer</font></span><td></tr></table>Rachel Berglund, IbisTek's director, said as a contract printer for Reebok, which provides clothing and equipment for the NHL, she contacted the Penguins front office to see if they were interested in any special printing jobs for the playoffs."The team has other printers, but they are not local, so the timing of our question and the fact that we are a local company made it just right for the Penguins," Berglund said.At 11 a.m. Wednesday, the Penguins called placing the order for T-shirts, one for each ticket-holder at tonight's 7 p.m. game."We're making them all one size, so if you want to wear your lucky (Sidney) Crosby jersey underneath, the T-shirt will still fit," Berglund said.The Penguins submitted the artwork for the shirts, so IbisTek crews worked Wednesday on the screens that carry the logo.Thursday morning the screens were loaded into the screening machines with simple black ink and the race was on.Ink smeared across the screens transferred the skating, scarf-wearing Penguin onto the shirts' upper left corner. Then workers removed the shirts and placed them in dryers set for 390 degrees. From there the shirts were packed into boxes, ready to be driven the 30 miles to the Mellon Arena.Ryan Erdlen, who works in IbisTek's art department, is one of the lucky 17,496 who will get to see the Penguins take on the Rangers live and in person.His souvenir for the game?A T-shirt he helped make.