THN Archive: Penguins Defy Logic; They Take Flight

This dive into The Hockey News archive looks back at a time when the Pittsburgh Penguins were shockingly good to start the 1986-87 season.

Through nine games of that year, the Penguins were 8-1 and being led by none other than Mario Lemieux.

Many of those early wins were come-from-behind and the team eventually finished the season with a 30-38-12 record missing the playoffs.

The Penguins were still a few seasons away from becoming the powerhouse that they became in the early 1990's, but for a time in 1986, things felt good.

Nov. 7, 1986 / Vol. 40, Issue 7

This sort ofthing has, mind you, long been nothing less than an autumn ritual in Western Pennsylvania.

There stands Pittsburgh at the top of its division, consistently forging victories from circumstances which would move lesser teams to unconditional surrender.

As always, there is the adoring populace, those legions of fans who realize that any set of clothing not featuring black and gold is hopelessly out of style.

The team that is the dominant—and sometimes only—topic of conversation in stores and saloons, on television and talk shows.

Yeah, an 8-1 record is just what the town has come to expect in the waning days of October, just what it needs to take the chill from those crisp autumn evenings.

The only thing is, the division Pittsburgh was lording over as the calendar crept toward November was not the AFC Central, but the Patrick.

And the team in question no longer is the Steelers, whose season long ago deteriorated into nothing more than a competition for drafting position.

Instead, the imagination of fans in Pittsburgh—and anywhere else they appreciate a success story that would baffle even Horatio Alger—has been captured by the Penguins.

You know, the Penguins. The team with the amusing name and comical history. The one with more former owners than playoff appearances. The one whose work ethic usually suffers by comparison to that of a welfare fraud.

Come on, you remember. The Penguins. The species for whom impending extinction was a veritable rite of summer. The group which inspired all those great one-liners about waterfowl incapable of flight.

Well, no, not really. Sure, the uniforms haven’t changed in a few years and there is hardly a new face on the roster.

But if their play in the early weeks of this season is an accurate barometer, these Penguins are not to be confused with their largely wretched predecessors of the past 19 years.

And oh, this team does have an undeniable flair for the dramatic. It began the season with a team-record seven straight wins, no fewer than three of them in overtime.

And two days after the Philadelphia Flyers aborted the effort to tie the record for the best start in NHL history with a 5-3 loss at the Spectrum, the Penguins retaliated by doing precisely the same to previously-unbeaten, untied Philadelphia, this time by a 4-2 score before yet another sellout crowd at the Civic Arena.

No run-of-the-rink revenge for this team, either. It spotted Philadelphia a 1-0 lead 13 seconds into the game before pulling off its sixth come-from-behind victory of the season.

All this from a team whose response to adversity traditionally has been unqualified collapse.

In many ways, the second game against the Flyers was a microcosm of the early season.

Goalie Roberto Romano, who set a team record with wins in seven staight starts, again played like a man who could prevent a gnat from entering the mouth of a train tunnel. Ho hum, add another 41 saves to the list.

“As long as I can see the puck, I can stop it,” he said.

Seeing the puck isn’t a problem when third-year center Mario Lemieux has it. The difficulty there is believing what you see him do with it.

Okay, so he only had a goal and two assists against the Flyers. Pretty shabby, compared to his back-to-back five-point games against Buffalo and New Jersey the previous weekend.

So maybe the guy’s entitled to an off-night. Especially when the guy had 24 points in those first nine games.

And that is to say nothing of defensemen Doug Bodger and Ville Siren, who have provided irrefutable evidence of developing into major offensive forces.

Or forwards such as Randy Cunneyworth and Dan Frawley and Dave Hannan, guys who are not household names beyond the confines of their backyards, but who already have produced a season’s worth of timely plays and goals.

Or defenseman Jim Johnson, whose low profile is the antithesis of his high quality of play.

It is best left, then, to coach Bob Berry to put the Penguins’ first few weeks into proper, clinical perspective: “It’s mind-boggling.”

Fair enough. Still, none of this is to suggest Calgary or Edmonton should begin dispatching waves of scouts to Pittsburgh to begin formulating a game plan for the Stanley Cup finals.

This is a team whose continued success hinges greatly on the health of several key players.

If, for example, Lemieux were to be sidelined for more than a few hours by an injury, people on the Civic Arena Corp, payroll likely would begin queuing up for cyanide tablets.

Even if nary a player suffers anything as debilitating as a pimple this year, it would be folly of unbounded proportions to project their 8-1 start over an 80-game season.

These are not the 1976-77 Montreal Canadiens.

That is a reality the Penguins grasp as well—and probably better—than most.

“It’s a great start,” Berry said. “Unfortunately, that’s all it is—a start.”

But if this is a dream, Pittsburgh is in no hurry to receive its wakeup call.

THN Archive is an exclusive vault of 2,640 issues and more than 156,000 stories for subscribers, chronicling the complete history of The Hockey News from 1947 until today. Visit THN.com/archive and subscribe today at subscribe.thehockeynews.com