Flightless Birds Head South (and West)

The kid was an exchange student from French Canada, so he had no idea that he was committing a major social faux pas.

All he wanted to do during the 1995-96 season was take the jersey number of his favorite player while playing for the Plum (PA) High School hockey team, and nobody else had taken the digits when it was his turn to pick. His name wasn't important, but the jersey number — No. 66 — was.

For high school hockey players in the Pittsburgh area, the attitude toward wearing Mario Lemieux's uniform number could be best summed up by fictional hockey fan Wayne Campbell: "We're not worthy!"

Last month, Lemieux, who has been battling a heart ailment since Thanksgiving, retired as a player for the third, and probably last, time. Sometime in the next year and a half, when the team is sold, he will be out as the Penguins' principal owner.

At one time, around 15 years ago, Lemieux was known as the man who saved hockey in Pittsburgh. About five years ago, he became the man who saved hockey in Pittsburgh twice.

Now, though, it looks as if Lemieux merely temporarily prevented the inevitable. Twice.

The next sale will probably send the team out of town, with Kansas City and Las Vegas being the two leading candidates to pirate the Penguins (geddit?).

The Penguins' troubles stem from the fact that, even with a new collective bargaining agreement that slashes player costs, they aren't financially viable while playing in Mellon Arena, the oldest facility in the NHL.

Lemieux announced last month that the team would probably be sold to an ownership group that would move after next season, when the Mellon Arena lease expires. The bulk of that money has to come from government.

With western Pennsylvania still reeling from the collapse of big steel more than a quarter century ago, I can probably think of about 300 million better ways to spend $300 million on than a corporate welfare scheme to benefit the Penguins.

And so, apparently, can the local and state governments, which is why the Penguins might not remain in Pittsburgh beyond the 2006-07 season.

The only hope of securing financing hinges on the Isle of Capri receiving a slot machine casino license that will be awarded in Pittsburgh under a 2004 state law legalizing slot machine gambling. The developer has pledged arena financing if it gets the license.

With time running out, this saga would appear to affect only Pittsburgh and its fans. The players would still have contracts and the league would still have the same number of teams. Some of the names would merely change.

But the Penguins' probable move should be a concern to the NHL, just like it should have been a concern when the Quebec Nordiques packed up and moved to Colorado, or when the Winnipeg Jets hot-footed it to Phoenix, or when Minnesota dropped the "North" from its name and took the Stars to Dallas.

In each of those instances, teams moved from cities where hockey was part of the heritage and set up shop in towns where most residents aren't sure whether pucks are made of plastic or leather. Yeah, Minneapolis got the Wild through expansion, but that doesn't change the fact that it shouldn't have lost its team in the first place.

Pittsburgh, which has supported its team as well as any American city this side of Detroit, would be the latest town on that list.

And, just maybe, that's why the NHL is losing its grip on "major sport" status.

The league has only one network deal — with NBC, which is showing one or two games a week for the same rights fee, $0, that it has with the Arena Football League.

ESPN, which offers 24-hour-a-day sports programming, declined to even discuss a renewal of its contract.

Basically, what ESPN and ESPN2 were saying was, "Yeah, we know we've got 336 hours of programming to fill each week. But we think we can do better with 14 extra episodes of 'SportsCenter' and five 'Pardon the Interruptions' than we can with five hockey games."

Maybe they know something the NHL doesn't — that taking teams away from cities where people actually care about the sport and putting them in cities where they don't is not conducive to having a marketable product.

And it also indicates that merely returning isn't cause for much of a celebration in the NHL offices. The league is not only not out of the woods yet, but the underbrush is thick, the light is fading, and the noise coming from the shadows is ominous.