Penguins need to stay in Pittsburgh

Uhh, it’s cold. Really cold. Looking outside my window, I can currently see about 97 inches… Uhh, it’s cold. Really cold. Looking outside my window, I can currently see about 97 inches of snow on the ground. What’s more, the heat in my apartment is broken and I can see my breath inside.

What does this have to do with anything? I want to talk about another place around here that’s pretty cold. No, it’s not my apartment. It’s the Igloo. Or, as the suits like to call it, Mellon Arena, the home of the Bargain Basement Pittsburgh Penguins. It’s 42 years old, has a retractable roof and was used as the setting for a horrible Jean Claude Van Damme movie.

And it has got to go, people.

In recent years, the Penguins have been in talks with county officials regarding an impressive luxury-box-friendly replacement for the National Hockey League’s oldest arena. The initial proposal called for $160 million in taxpayer money to compliment the $108 million that the Pens themselves would put up. There’s only one problem with this proposal.

The Pens aren’t making any money. At all.

I would be surprised if the Penguins had $108 right now, let alone $108 million.

For the first time since Mario Lemieux bought the team out of bankruptcy in 1999, the Pens will end up in the red at the end of this fiscal year. And things don’t look to be getting any better financially for the Pens.

In one of the most depressing weeks in Penguin history, the Pens began last week by trading forward Alexei Kovalev, one of the most dynamic offensive threats in the NHL, for a pile of cash and some unproven prospects.

They ended the week by asking the county for more than the initial $160 million in taxpayer money that would fund the yet-to-be-named 2006 arena project. What’s more, Lemieux is talking about not playing anymore after this season.

The Penguins are losing, and with the exit of Kovalev, they are going to continue to lose. More losses mean less fan interest, and less fan interest means fewer tickets sold. Fewer tickets sold means less of a chance to keep All-Star players, more losses, less money, you get the picture.

The bottom line is that the Penguins need more money if they are going to have a snowball’s chance in hell of staying in Pittsburgh. They can’t make that money until they get a new arena, so they are going to have to get it from somewhere.

There are various state funds that grant money for projects that promote economic growth, but the county has flat out said that it has no money for a new arena. So Ed Rendell, I am begging you: do whatever you can to keep the Penguins in Pittsburgh.

This is a team that has won two Stanley Cups and boasts quite possibly the greatest player to ever lace up skates. If the Penguins leave Pittsburgh, you’re not only killing off a hockey team with 36 years of tradition, but you’re killing off my childhood. You’re killing off staying up and listening to Mike Lange call the game when I was supposed to be asleep, and my brother’s crappy shop class projects that always featured the Penguins logo. You’re defecating on years of Kevin Stevens growth charts, Mario Lemieux safety-belt commercials and Jaromir Jagr mullets.

And you go and give the Pirates a new ballpark? Please!

I am ranting now, and my hands are turning purple, so I am going to end this column. In closing, I would just like to say that as a person who works and pays taxes in the city of Pittsburgh, I would much rather that my taxes go toward a new arena for the Pens than Ultimate Frisbee fields in Highland Park, or extra cops for “Code Orange” situations or extra salt for the roads. And if the Penguins were to leave Pittsburgh, it would not only be a cold (pun intended) miscarriage of sporting justice, but it would severely hurt the local economy. Brrrrrrrr!

Michael Cunningham is a columnist for The Pitt News and he is considering setting himself on fire to stay warm if his heat is not fixed within the next 24 hours.