PITTSBURGH PENGUINS Lemieux's raise to be held back

Even with Lemieux's rollback, the Penguins will lose about $5 million.
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Owner-player Mario Lemieux won't accept the $5 million raise tentatively promised to him by the Pittsburgh Penguins' board as the money-losing team tries to keep its debt at a manageable level.
With the Penguins last in the NHL's overall standings and their attendance at its lowest level since the mid-1980s, president Ken Sawyer said Monday that the team will lose about $5 million this season even with Lemieux's rollback.
Lemieux drew media and fan criticism after it was disclosed the board had nearly doubled his salary as player and chief executive officer to $10 million. Lemieux was given the raise even after the team shed its best players -- Jaromir Jagr, Robert Lang and Alexei Kovalev -- to cut its payroll to a league-low $23 million.
Contingency
Lemieux makes $5.25 million as a player, or several million dollars below what most of the NHL's best players make.
The pay raise, designed to make Lemieux's salary comparable to players like Jagr and Peter Forsberg, was contingent upon the Penguins reaching certain revenue levels.
With attendance down by a league-worst 3,200 per game from this time a year ago -- the Penguins averaged 12,076 for their first 11 home games -- Lemieux decided to not make the pay raise any issue any longer.
"Rather than wait for us to bring this up, Mario stepped up to key members of our board and said basically, 'My salary is going to be rolled back to where it was last year and the year before. We need to respect the bottom line,' " Sawyer said.
Lemieux, who has not spoken to reporters for nearly a month as he sits out with a left hip flexor, did not talk Monday about his decision.
"We had to come in at our targeted bottom line, we had to achieve our revenue goals or otherwise we would revisit that [raise]," Sawyer said. "Lemieux stepped up without us even having to sit down and talk about it."
Losses
Sawyer emphasized the Penguins, who emerged from bankruptcy only four years ago, are not in desperate financial straits. He said the estimated $5 million in losses are manageable, though not a figure the franchise wants to reach each season.
However, he said the losses would have been much higher if the team hadn't traded forward Martin Straka and his $4.35 million salary to the Los Angeles Kings on Sunday, or if Lemieux hadn't voluntarily waived the pay raise.
The projected loss does not include the $3 million in bonuses No. 1 draft pick Marc-Andre Fleury could make if he stays with the team all season.
Meanwhile, Sawyer said there was no update on the new arena the Penguins have pursued almost since the day Lemieux's group bought the team in federal bankruptcy court in 1999.
Gov. Ed Rendell strongly hinted during a recent visit to Pittsburgh that if slot machines are legalized at off-track locations, some revenues would be earmarked for an arena to replace the nearly 43-year-old Mellon Arena. The Penguins expect about $60 million would be generated for the $282 million project from the slots.
"For the long-term future of this team in Pittsburgh, it's very, very important we have an arena that's competitive with the other opportunities in this town for the sports dollar," Sawyer said.