Wednesday, October 08, 2003

By Dejan Kovacevic, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

The 37th edition of the Penguins' training camp was a proving ground. A place where a motley collection of rookies, journeymen and castoffs reported with the hopes of assuming one of the dozen or so available NHL roster spots.

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Because of that, the competition in the Southpointe scrimmages was intense to the point of being incendiary, sticks and elbows often raised to shoulder level. It was no less heated off the ice, as players took advantage of every opportunity to impress management. When a coach or executive would stroll down the hall, conversation would halt and equipment matters would be addressed. Or the weight room suddenly would be at maximum occupancy.

"You had to battle, every day for every inch," defenseman Dan Focht said. "The amount of work guys were putting in was just ... unbelievable."

Which is why perhaps the most unusual aspect of this unusual camp was that the player with the least to prove fit right in.

"I would walk into that weight room every day at a time I thought was pretty early in the morning, and he was the first one there ... lifting weights, riding the treadmill. Every single day," center Rico Fata said. "This is someone who just turned 38. He owns the team. He's the captain. He's a living legend as a player. And he's working just as hard as any of us."

Coach Eddie Olczyk gave the Penguins a day off yesterday. It was only the third such day since the start of training camp more than a month ago.

The telephone rang at the Carnegie office of Tom Plasko, Lemieux's sports massage therapist and personal trainer for the past decade.

"It was Mario," Plasko said. "He wanted to know if we should be doing something."

Lemieux and Plasko met at 9 a.m. and engaged in an hour and 15 minutes of what Plasko described as "serious, high-intensity stuff. Some cardio. Lots of leg conditioning."

It was not the first time this off-season that Lemieux paid Plasko an unexpected visit. The most significant one came three months ago.

As the Penguins' worst season in two decades was dragging to a merciful end, it looked to nearly everyone that Lemieux was finished. It seemed even he thought so. In his final game April 2, he used multiple sweaters and sticks for purposes of memorabilia, then remained in the rink area nearly a half-hour afterward to sign autographs for fans. Among his ominous comments later: "If this was my last game, it was a great experience."

Still, Lemieux would not firmly pronounce himself finished. He decided first to clear his mind.

"At the end of last season ... it was a rough finish for all of us," he said. "I wanted to sit back for a couple of months and really get some rest physically and mentally."

There was no catharsis, Lemieux insisted, no dramatic moment when he came to a realization that he wished to continue.

"Not really. I just felt better as the summer went on and decided to keep going."

But there was something unusual about this decision to come back, and that was revealed to Plasko on the final day of June when he asked to meet with him for the first time since the season ended.

"He came to me and said, 'I want to go to a whole new level,' " Plasko said. "He never said something like that to me before, and it gave me chills."

Lemieux's request for Plasko was to help him develop more speed, strength and endurance than at any point in his career. In fact, when he set the bar for Plasko, he went back to childhood.

"He told me that, when he was a kid, his legs were so strong naturally, that he always had that extra push down there," Plasko said. "He wanted to get back to that, so that's where we started concentrating."

Plasko ordered special equipment to tailor to that focus, and the program began.

The first few weeks were ordinary: Lemieux was placed on a strict nutritional diet and rode the stationary bicycle every day to build stamina while working three days a week with machinery and resistant bands to strengthen specific muscles most important to hockey players. Quickly, the repertoire intensified and reached the point where he would train 90 minutes with minimal interruption, the equivalent of running a mini-marathon on a daily basis.

Just as he did yesterday.

"Anybody who knows anything about working out knows what it means to do that," Plasko said. "He was going from machine to machine, right from 32 minutes of hard cycling to the bench press."

Lemieux even engaged in plyometrics, an acute form of exercise designed to improve quickness by rapidly expanding and contracting muscles. And he and Plasko maintain he never had a blip or a backtrack through the process.

"It felt like it didn't get more difficult as I went along. Not at all," Lemieux said. "With everything I did, it just felt better week after week. I felt stronger, and it just became more encouraging as I went along."

By the time he arrived in training camp a month ago, his 6-foot-4 frame was a trim and toned 230 pounds, down roughly 12 from his playing weight last season. The Penguins' physical testing showed his body fat count to be 9 percent, considered middle of the pack within the team's mostly young roster but exceptional for a 38-year-old, even by athletic standards.

Most important, his long-troublesome back has not flared up in the slightest.

"Right now, the treatments Mario gets for his back are no different than any player on the team," Plasko said. "Just maintenance."

"Hundred percent," Lemieux said. "First time in a long time."

Lemieux explained that the decision to ratchet up his conditioning was born of a desire to remain among the NHL's elite. He led the league in scoring most of last season but faded significantly at the end, partly because of injuries, partly because of losing his supporting cast, partly because -- he now can say with certainty -- he was not in the necessary shape to extend his dominance over an 82-game season.

"That's the only way I can play this game, at the highest level," Lemieux said. "And right now, with the condition that everyone in the league is in, you have to be in the best shape of your life if you want to play at a high level. I have to be able to compete with these young, fast players, and I realized that early this summer and prepared myself accordingly to give myself the best chance to be successful."

When Fata was in junior hockey, not terribly long ago, he wore No. 96

"The nine was for Wayne Gretzky's 99, and the six was for Mario," Fata said. "I just loved him as a kid. Now, I'm here playing with him. It's wild."

Unusual, too.

In the team's black-and-gold scrimmage Saturday at Mellon Arena, Fata had possession of the puck along the boards. And then, he did not.

"Somebody came and got it from me, so I wanted to give him a tug," Fata said. "I didn't know it was ... you know ... him. My first reaction was that I wanted to go and tell him, 'Hey, I'm sorry.' Meanwhile, he's probably thinking, 'Don't even worry about it. It's part of the game.' But that's still my first reaction. It's probably the reaction a lot of the younger guys here have, I'm guessing."

Mentor Mario

Shortly after Lemieux played what appeared to be his final game, he was asked by a reporter if he would enjoy being a part of the Penguins' planned youth movement for the 2003-04 season.

He was typically blunt.

"I'm not sure I want to be part of a rebuilding process. I've been wrestling with that. Maybe the young kids might feel more comfortable if I'm not around, being the owner. Maybe I intimidate a few of them. That's really what I found out the past couple of months."

That comment is part of the reason, when Lemieux announced his comeback to the public July 31, he took care to stress that he was prepared to take on the role of mentor.

He has backed that in camp. By taking playful jabs at unflappable goaltender Sebastien Caron. By working a little extra to communicate with rookie linemate Konstantin Koltsov in his distant second language. By inviting No. 1 draft pick Marc-Andre Fleury into his house and assigning him to baby-sit the children. Even the late-rounders who lasted only a week into camp were getting a smile, a wink, a stick-tap to the pads.

"Oh, he's been just great to be around," Caron said. "A lot of fun."

It has represented quite the departure. In the Penguins' glory days, a rookie had to be exceptional to make the team much less be embraced in the locker room, and Lemieux was no different than other veterans in wanting youngsters to prove themselves before they could join in the fun.

"Not always," he replied when asked if he always viewed himself as a mentor. "Ten years ago, I was probably in my prime. I was consumed by what I was doing on the ice and wanted to be the best in the world, and that took a lot of my energy and focus. But then, you get older and realize you have to do these kinds of things for the young players. I look at them now and think to myself that I've been there before. That's easier to do when you get older."

But it clearly is not yet easier -- and probably never will be -- to get younger players to take a deep breath around him. The day before the first cutdown of camp, players who feared they were near the end approached the team's public relations officials to get some memorabilia signed by Lemieux. They were too embarrassed to ask him themselves.

"We can all see he's trying to to make everyone as comfortable as possible, but that's not easy because we have a young group here," Fata said. "But you know what? He has a positive effect on us just by being who he is. Just by watching what he does, how he carries himself as a professional and as a person, we can all learn."

Veteran left winger Kelly Buchberger, who played with Gretzky and Mark Messier in his youth as part of the Edmonton Oilers' dynasty teams, concurred.

"There's a certain way Mario and the truly great players conduct themselves," he said. "They have the best manners on and off the ice ... a certain way that they walk and talk ... a certain way they earn respect by how they behave. I can't tell you enough how much that meant for me and how much I think it means for our young players here to be able to watch and draw from someone like that."

On the Southpointe ice early last week, Olczyk was conducting a drill in which four players attack and three defend.

Of the three defending, one is a forward, and he has the most difficult task. Not only because he must be careful in deciding when and where to go, but also because he has more ice to cover. As a result, the drill can take a minute or more to complete.

Lemieux was the defensive forward for the first run.

The attacking team carried the puck into the zone and began working below the goal line. Lemieux instantly committed to going deep and pursuing center Milan Kraft, who had possession. When Kraft turned and tried to skate away, his back to Lemieux, Lemieux stayed right with him, their shoulders touching.

Then, in one brilliant motion, Lemieux reached around Kraft and swatted the puck backward between Kraft's legs and his own. He spun around to collect it just as it arrived and softly banked it away.

End of drill.

Magical Mario

Lemieux needs 18 goals to become the seventh player to 700 goals, eight points to become the sixth to 1,700, and he has acknowledged those milestones were partially influential in his decision to add a 17th season to his Hall of Fame career. He also does not discount the possibility he could challenge for a seventh Art Ross Trophy, which, if he wins it, would make him the NHL's oldest scoring champion.

But the number which Lemieux most craves to achieve this season is 108. That is because he has played in 107 Stanley Cup playoff games, none in three years, and has done little to mask his frustration in that span with being left off the stage he once dominated.

"My goal all summer has been to come into training camp ready to go to work and ready to help this team get to the playoffs," he said. "That's my personal goal, too. I want to play in the playoffs once again. That's very important to me."

He displays a firm grasp of reality on the subject in regularly pointing out the enormity of the challenge. Rosters half-filled with untested rookies and babyfaced goaltenders generally fall significantly short of the criteria for a contender.

But that might also be why, for all his trophies, rings and medals, he does not hesitate to project that carrying this particular team to a postseason berth would earn a special place among his list of achievements.

"It would be pretty high, I'd say. But I think we have a chance, too, with the changes we made this summer and the new coaching staff and new system we have. We're very well organized right now. I think we have a fair chance of making the playoffs and surprising a lot of people."

Part of Lemieux's confidence for the team stems from his raised expectations of himself. That is the direct result, those close to him say, of his unprecedented physical shape and how he has benefited from it on the ice. He is attempting one-on-one moves he admits he had not tried in a decade. He is skating more fluidly, forward and laterally, buying himself more than the split-second he usually needs to dissect a defense. And, most apparent, he is competing with more energy and fire, a 180-degree turn from his largely listless displays late last season.

"That's what I've found throughout my career, that, when I'm feeling better physically, I'm able to think a little better," he said. "And this is the best shape I've ever been in, so I'm feeling really good."

So good, in fact, he no longer hedges when asked how long he might keep going and speaks freely of playing into his 40s.

He even expresses regret at having sat out 1997-2000 in his initial retirement.

"Yeah, maybe a little bit. If I had taken one year off, that would have been plenty. But that was my decision at the time because I thought I wanted to do something else with my life. I realize now that maybe wasn't the right decision."

Which is why part of his mission is to make up for lost time. That means not only attempting to regain those years but also achieving the same extraordinary level.

"I just love the game," Lemieux said. "To be able to play this game is the most important thing to me right now, especially at my age. I missed 3 1/2 years, sitting at home or playing golf or not doing much. That's really when I found out I was missing the game a lot and wanted to come back. I'm glad to be back, and I'm excited for the season to start."

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