The Pens are doing great in Pittsburgh, but that wasn't the case in 2006.
Jimmy Parey sits on a stool outside his bar, alternately checking ID’s and greeting his regulars as they arrive a good three hours before the Penguins game. He could throw a football from the front step of Shale’s Café and hit the Pittsburgh Penguins’ new arena, rising up across 5th ave.
A bar owner with clear title on a place across the street from the new rink in town. Sounds easy, eh?
Not so much. Lesson No. 1 here in Steeltown, even as the Penguins raised their third Stanley Cup banner Friday night, is that nothing to do with hockey in Pittsburgh has ever come easy.
"I bought the bar in 2004, thinking, ‘OK — this is great. Maybe 60-65% of my business is going to be Penguins business,’" said Parey, a Pittsburgh native. "Well, the year I bought it, and I didn’t know this was coming, they had a lockout. They never played that whole season. Panic situation.
"Then, (coming out of the lockout) they’re selling the team out of town. You’re hearing, ‘Some guy (Jim Balsillie) is moving it to Canada.’ Well, my anxiety attacks are getting serious now. You’ve got a bar — and no team? What do you do?"
As the fans watched highlights of the Penguins fabulous Cup run of a season ago Friday night at Mellon Arena — then saw their Penguins hang onto beat the New York Rangers 3-2 in the season opener for both teams — it was easy to forget that hockey had hung by a thread here only three years ago.
In late 2006, the Penguins very existence here boiled down to whether Isle of Capri Casinos could win a license to build a casino. If they did, they would fund a new arena for the Penguins. If not, Jim Balsillie was ready.
The fate of an Original 12 team rest in the hands of a faceless gaming control board in Harrisburg, PA, and a trio of non-hockey, non-local gambling corporations vying for a casino license: one from Cleveland, one headed by a Detroit businessman, and the Isle of Capri, headquartered in St. Louis.
When the Detroiter won the license, even NHL commissioner Gary Bettman — who was positively glowing here Friday night — couldn’t paint a pretty picture for hockey fans here.
"The decision by the Gaming Commission was terrible news for the Penguins, their fans and the NHL," Bettman said in a statement that day. "The future of this franchise in Pittsburgh is uncertain and the Penguins now will have to explore all other options, including possible relocation. The NHL will support the Penguins in their endeavors."
"I wouldn’t have liked it much if they’d have moved to Kansas City, or Hamilton," said Chris Kiral, 22, enjoying a cold beer down the street at Milano’s hours before the banner raising Friday.
Jim Balsillie saw an available team, and circled the Penguins like a vulture.
"Everybody hated him here. I thought for sure they were gone," said Kiral’s pal, Justin Farrell, 21. "Canada does need more teams than just six, that’s a fact. But you’ve got to take ‘em out of the South. Not here."
The rest of the Penguins story is history, and on Friday a house of 17,132 made for the Penguins’ 119th consecutive sell out. It was the last opening day at Mellon Arena, nee the Civic Center, or The Igloo.
In the end, the team will outlast the building. Not the other way around, as it seemed for a while there.
"The Beatles, Elvis and Sinatra all played here. How many structure are still standing where you can say that?" said Penguins V.P. of communications Tom McMillan. "In 1975 we went bankrupt. I mean, flat-out bankrupt. The I.R.S. came and padlocked the place. You couldn’t get in."
There is more character in The Igloo then there are characters at Shale’s.
It was originally built as an opera house, and topped with the largest retractable stainless steel dome roof in the world, said to open or close in two minutes. They don’t test that theory anymore however, because 47 years after the Ice Capades opened this room back in 1961, no one is positive the system still works. Or that it would close again, if opened.
If imitation is the best form of flattery, it must say something that nobody else emulated the space ship design. Then again, there isn’t much about Pittsburgh’s franchise path you’d enter into a How-To manual.
Except, perhaps, the ending.
"Every day I wake up and I come down here," said our barkeep Parey, looking at the new rink with a mixture of relief and satisfaction. "I look at that thing and I say, ‘Thank God.’ They’re not moving now."
