Leaving the Igloo
PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Penguins have neither a timetable to hire a replacement for Craig Patrick, their general manager since the final days of the 1980s, nor a perfect candidate in mind.
"You could be an assistant GM, a former GM, you could be an agent or you could BE none of the above," team president Ken Sawyer said Thursday after the team decided not to renew Patrick's contract.
The Penguins can only hope they get a general manager as good as Patrick was immediately after he was hired as Tony Esposito's replacement in December 1989.
Consider this Hall of Fame resume for Patrick: Drafted Sidney Crosby and Jaromir Jagr. Traded for Ron Francis, Joe Mullen and Larry Murphy. Re-signed Mario Lemieux so one of hockey's greatest players could play his entire career in Pittsburgh. Hired coaches Scotty Bowman and Bob Johnson.
But, after four consecutive last-place finishes, the Penguins did what once would have seemed unthinkable: They let Patrick go.
That Lemieux, the team's primary owner and a close friend of Patrick, would agree to such a move illustrates how far the Penguins have fallen since making the Eastern Conference final in 2001.
"It was a very difficult decision," Sawyer said. "But we both stood back and did what's best for the team."
In recent years, after being forced to tear apart a longtime contender following an 11-season streak of always reaching the playoffs, it appeared Patrick had lost his drive. His creative touch also disappeared, and many of the player and coaching decisions he made were bad ones.
Just as significantly, Patrick confided in few and hired fewer still — to the point the Penguins had a smaller front-office staff than most low-level minor league teams. Patrick did all the hiring, firing and decision-making and, as a result, recent player personnel decisions seemed to be based more on hunches than reasoned thinking.
Despite averaging only 25 victories over the last four seasons, and the uncertainty over whether the up-for-sale team will get a new arena, the Penguins don't expect to have trouble finding a qualified replacement. Sawyer will conduct the search and make the hire.
"I'm not going to rush this," he said. "I want to be sure I'm comfortable with who we bring onboard."
The new general manager will be asked to bring the Penguins up to NHL standards in the scouting and player personnel departments, where they were undermanned under Patrick. But he won't hire a new coach — Michel Therrien, the former Montreal Canadiens coach hired by Patrick at midseason, was told Thursday he will return in 2006-097.
"This is a young team that is only going to get better," Sawyer said, pointing to the expected addition of former No. 2 draft pick Evgeni Malkin to a Crosby-led team next season. "We're very happy with the job Michel Therrien has done. He will be the coach next year."
After starting this season with a veteran team, the Penguins made a dramatic midseason switch to mostly youth and, despite finishing 22-46-14, appeared to improve markedly over the final two months of the season. The 18-year-old Crosby became the youngest player in NHL history to reach the 100-point mark by scoring 102.
But it was another former No. 1 pick, Lemieux, who led the Penguins to their greatest successes under Patrick.
Within 18 months of being hired as GM and interim coach, Patrick had built a team around Lemieux that would win the Stanley Cup in 1991 and 1992 and have the NHL's best record in 1993. His 1991 trade for Francis and defenseman Ulf Samuelsson is widely regarded as being the final piece needed to transform what had long been one of NHL's worst teams into a Stanley Cup winner.
But after former ownership led by Howard Baldwin drove the team into bankruptcy in the late 1990s, Patrick was forced to dismantle as stars such as Jagr, Alex Kovalev, Martin Straka and Robert Lang went elsewhere.
Still, Patrick's ultimate downfall may have been his inability to bring in a quality coach after his initial two hirings couldn't have been much better: Johnson in 1990 and, less than two years later, Bowman. Bowman moved from the front office to behind the bench after Johnson died of cancer only six months after winning the Stanley Cup in 1991.
Of his final five coaches, not counting interim coach Herb Brooks in 2000, Patrick fired four: Kevin Constantine, Ivan Hlinka, Rick Kehoe and Eddie Olczyk. Hlinka, Kehoe and Olczyk had no NHL head-coaching experience, yet were hired without Patrick considering other candidates.
Despite making a long series of excellent trades, Patrick also made some bad ones, including what is often called the worst in NHL history — dealing future scoring star Markus Naslund for journeyman Alex Stojanov in 1996.
