Welcome back, Mark


Mark Recchi was a core member of the Penguins first Stanley Cup champion team. Mario Lemieux thinks Mark Recchi has the statistics to be enshrined in hockey’s Hall of Fame someday. Ray Shero notes that Mark Recchi has been a twenty-goal scorer in several recent seasons and knows his team needs a proven scorer on the wings. Pittsburgh fans know that something happened, sometime last year, between Recchi and some of the young players in the Penguins locker room. Fans aren’t sure about bringing Recchi back and think maybe it’s time just to make a clean break with the past.

On the first point: I don’t know what went down in the Penguins locker room last season. I don’t know what happened between Crosby or Recchi. I do know what happened to the Penguins team last year. And knowing what happened to the team last season can help us understand the "locker room" issues. Everyone on the Penguins, from ownership to the general manager to the players on the team, were under what we know now to be a delusional impression that the assembled team could contend for the Stanley Cup. After all, Crosby was going to be a star, and Mario Lemieux was a star, and Recchi, Leclair, Palffy, and Gonchar—wow, the team had the potential to be good. Except that, Lemieux, Leclair, and Recchi, who probably could’ve formed the league’s most imposing line at one point in the past decade, well, needless to say, in 2005, the idea of dominance quickly faded away. The team wasn’t properly constructed for the new NHL, and then guess what happened? Loss after loss after loss after loss.

In the midst of all that losing—losing to which the veterans were unaccustomed and to which the young players, many of whom, like Crosby, played on winning teams on their way to the show, also weren't used to, guess what? Tempers got fried. Players were disappointed. Things were said. Dissension developed—as it always does with losing. Blame was cast about; players got mad at each other. "Stuff" happened. Bad chemistry? Conflict between players? Duh. The players had expected the team to win, but two players retire, and then suddenly, losing and losing and rebuilding and feelings of "What the heck is going on here?" Naturally, in the midst of miserable losing, conflict developed.

I don’t believe that Shero brings Recchi back unless Recchi and Crosby have resolved whatever differences they had. The Penguins might not be the Mario Lemieux sponsored country club anymore, but any GM, not just Craig Patrick, knows the importance of keeping a superstar content. Certainly, anecdotal evidence (cell phone text messages exchanged between Crosby and Recchi, for one) points to the fact that the two men have resolved whatever issues they had. Also, it’s important to note that it’s not like Recchi wasn’t once Crosby’s age. Heck, a decade and a half ago, he and the stars of the Penguins team were in very similar life situations compared to the young players currently on the team. Those players didn’t have families or kids of their own yet and in many ways they still played like kids on the ice—with one exception. They were kids, young men, who were winning championships.

The 2006-07 Penguins aren’t going to contend for the Stanley Cup (sorry, folks, the team’s just not ready yet, and the young players aren’t yet fully the players they will one day be with more strength and more experience). So long as Recchi understands this fact coming in and knows that his role is to help the young team develop the habits and disciplines of a winning, championship team, all should be well in the locker room this year. Does that mean if losing happens, there will automatically be no locker room dissension? Of course not.

Yet coming in on a one-year deal, Recchi should understand that he’s there to help the team learn how to contend. And if that goes well, then maybe he signs another one year deal and the team comes closer to contending, and then maybe a year after that, if he’s able to adapt his game, maybe he’ll have a role to play on a team with a legitimate, realistic shot at challenging for the Cup.

Recchi won’t be wrong next year if he refuses to tolerate young players blindly expecting to lose and accepting losing contest after contest. Yet so long as he’s fully aware of the reality of the team of which he’ll be a member, we don’t need to worry about the Penguins just keeping him around to relive their glory days. Because Recchi will be doing his part to help the team build a ground for creating some new glory days in the years yet to come.