Penguins Reinvent Style Without Stars, But Still Winning By ALAN ROBINSON AP Sports Writer Monday November 05, 2001 8:11 PM PITTSBURGH (AP) - Not many goals at either end, not many rushes or odd-man breaks or flurries in front of the net. Obviously, this isn't the way the Pittsburgh Penguins play hockey. It is now. Without injured stars Mario Lemieux, Alexei Kovalev and Martin Straka - and without the traded Jaromir Jagr, too - the Penguins haven't exactly become disciples of the neutral zone trap, but they are a much different club. Since Straka broke a leg Oct. 28, the same day it was learned Lemieux needed hip surgery, the scores of the Penguins' four games have been 2-2, 3-0, 3-1 and 2-1. Here's the surprise: they won two of them. The reinvented Penguins will take their reconfigured style on a three-game southern road trip that begins Tuesday night in Carolina, and they expect it to be as successful there as it was in consecutive home victories. The Penguins beat Toronto 3-1 on Thursday and Tampa Bay 2-1 on Saturday with players named Kris Beech, Aleksey Morozov, Billy Tibbetts and Jan Hrdina playing key roles. "It wasn't really pretty, but any time you get four points out of two games, it's great," forward Robert Lang said Monday. "We have a beat-up team, a lot of guys missing and playing out of place, but it definitely showed a lot of character in our team." Kovalev, who had arthroscopic knee surgery last moth, and Lemieux will accompany the Penguins on the trip as they recover from their injuries. Kovalev could be back in 10 days to two weeks, and Lemieux expects to return quicker than the 3-to-4 weeks the doctors said he would need to get healthy. "When Alexei and Mario come back, that's two pretty big pieces of the puzzle," Lang said. "But I don't want to look ahead. I want to see some points in the next four or five games and go from there." The Penguins seem to be taking pride in playing a style they have rarely played before, even if it is one far less exciting than they are accustomed to playing. "Everybody knows that with all these skilled guys out of the lineup, we're not going to win 7-5," said goaltender Johan Hedberg, who will start Tuesday. "We have to play smart, play low-scoring games and take advantage of the breaks we're getting. "I think we've played pretty smart the last couple of games, and we've got to keep playing that way." Kevin Stevens said he's already getting calls from around the league and from his friends back home in Boston, wondering how the Penguins can keep playing so out of character. "They keep asking, `How are you guys winning?' and I hope they keep calling me," Stevens said. "You don't have a lot of guys you can go to right now, but you have 20 guys working hard and knowing they can win. It's been a lot of fun." The Penguins will probably go against Tom Barrasso, the goalie on their Stanley Cup championship teams in 1991 and 1992, on Tuesday. He moved into 10th place in career victories in Carolina's 1-0 victory Sunday over Phoenix. "We grew up together with this team here, and without him we wouldn't have won two Stanley Cups," Stevens said. "He was as big a part of it as anybody. But it would be nice to score some goals on him. "Right now, it would be nice to score some goals on anybody."
