Pittsburgh, PA (My Sportsbook) - Mario Lemieux begins the second full season of his comeback tonight when he and the Pittsburgh Penguins host the
Toronto Maple Leafs in the season opener at the Igloo.
Lemieux, whose return to the sport he dominated was one of the biggest sports stories of late 2000 and early '01, hopes to put an injury-riddled campaign behind him and play between 65 and 70 games. A season ago the Hall of Famer, bothered by hip and back problems, dressed just 24 times for the Pens, as his year was shut down shortly after he helped Team Canada to Olympic Gold in Salt Late City.
Pittsburgh's success obviously goes hand-and-hand with No. 66's health, but that is the case now more than ever. The club's potent attack of two years ago, slammed hard by last summer's departure of Jaromir Jagr, took yet another hit this offseason with the free agent loss of center Robert Lang, who inked a deal with Jagr's Capitals.
That leaves only Lemieux, Alexei Kovalev and the injured Martin Straka from the top-tier corps that led the Pens to the conference finals in 2001. Straka, who suffered a fractured vertebrae this summer, is not currently on the active roster, while Kovalev has been surrounded by talk of his nonexistent new contract.
The Pens, who missed the playoffs for the first time since 1990, enjoyed a relatively quiet offseason and are counting on players like Aleksey Morozov, Randy Robitaille and Wayne Primeau to provide some sort of support for Lemieux and Kovalev. The club even rolled the dice and brought in former No. 1 overall pick Alexandre Daigle, who returns to the ice after a failed attempt at an acting career.
Goaltender Johan Hedberg -- 2.75 GAA, .904 SP -- enters the season as the clear-cut starter. He was by no means spectacular in 2001-02 but he made the most with what he was given in front of him. Hedberg did regress in the second half, perhaps running out of gas. His 66 appearances were by far the most in a season of his primarily minor league career.
Pittsburgh is 15-14-6 all-time in season openers, but has dropped three in a row.
Toronto, meanwhile, begins the campaign after last spring's run to the East finals, where it fell to the Cinderella Hurricanes. The ensuing offseason saw the Leafs lose goaltender Curtis Joseph to Detroit via free agency, but his shoes were filled by two-time Vezina winner Ed Belfour.
The volatile 37-year-old, who backed Dallas to the 1999 Stanley Cup, has suffered through back-to-back off years with the Stars, but Toronto hopes a simple change of scenery will return him to form. Belfour, who had backup Marty Turco breathing down his neck in Big D, went 21-27-11 a year ago with a 2.65 goals-against average and .895 save-percentage.
Besides the signing of Belfour, GM/coach Pat Quinn went out and obtained veterans Tom Fitzgerald and Robert Svehla to join a solid cast led by captain Mats Sundin and Russian sniper Alexander Mogilny. The club will, however, be without gritty winger Gary Roberts, who is expected to be sidelined until February after offseason shoulder surgery.
Sundin, who finished fourth in the NHL with 80 points (41g, 39a) last season, is approaching two significant milestones. He is three goals shy of becoming the first Swedish-trained player to reach 400 goals, and just 58 points shy of 1,000.
Toronto is 32-39-14 all-time in season openers, and went 2-2 against the Penguins last year. The Leafs have won four of the last seven meetings overall, and snapped a two-game series road losing streak on April 12.
