and at the eleventh hour... the penguins are staying in pittsburgh. why the civic parents didn't want to replace the oldest arena hosting a national hockey league franchise with a guaranteed money-maker combining nhl games with a casino & the hundreds of other cash-vaccuums now enjoyed throughout sports in north america is beyond me. but they've clearly seen the error of their ways & the rumours of the kansas city penguins or the portland penguins or (up north of the 49th) the winnipeg penguins are no more. & after months of being accused of doing nothing to keep the penguins in pittsburgh, you can BET that nhl commish gary bettman will get NO retractions from the scores of haters who blame him for every fault of the game & the league (real OR imagined) & steadfastly refuse to acknowledge what he's done to put hockey on the north american sports MAP.
these are, of course, the same people who give him no credit for what he did keeping the flames in calgary. or the senators in ottawa. or the sabres in buffalo. & we're talking three teams that he personally held in place while they went through bankruptcy procedures within the last five years. refusing to consider the possiblity of relocation (which he had vowed would never happen again after the hartford whalers moved to carolina) until solutions were found. three teams whose new-found financial stability landed all three in the semi-finals within the last three playoff years.
i don't know if i'll EVER understand my countrymen's obssessive need to blame bettman for things done by bob godenow, or ted saskin, or john ziegler & alan eagleson (for you old-timers)... but as is becoming the norm in bettman's nhl, the nay-sayers wind up with a cold dish of crow to eat thanks to the best friend the nhl has had in a LONG time.
which is great news for pittsburgh. crosby, malkin, fleury, staal... man, they've got a 2nd penguins dynasty on the order of the lemieux/jagr days in the making.
but i guarantee you no one up here will give bettman the credit he so rightly deserves for holding the penguins in place by sheer force of will.