PITTSBURGH PENGUINS Lemieux joins 1,700-point club

He got the milestone on an assist, but the Pens were tied by the Islanders, 4-4.
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Mario Lemieux's latest career milestone started the Pittsburgh Penguins on their biggest offensive outburst of the season. It still wasn't good enough to get them a victory.
Lemieux joined what now is the NHL's six-member 1,700-point club with an assist on a typically-exceptional play that launched the Penguins' four-goal run on Wednesday night.
But on yet another disappointing night for perhaps the NHL's most talent-bare team, the Penguins wasted a two-goal lead in the third period and were tied 4-4 by the New York Islanders. Pittsburgh is 1-4-3 and is winless in four games.
"We will take it, take it and run," said Islanders coach Steve Stirling, whose team beat Pittsburgh 7-2 on Saturday night. "We're lucky to get one [point]."
Win-lose situation
The postgame look on Lemieux's face said it all: What good are accomplishments when they don't guarantee victories?
"I thought we were going to win the way we played the first two periods," said Lemieux, who has points in seven straight games. "It's disappointing."
The Penguins were behind 2-0 late in the first period when Lemieux took Konstantin Koltsov's pass, dangled the puck between the legs of defenseman Janne Niinimaa, turned and made a backhanded pass to the slot to Dick Tarnstrom for the defenseman's second goal.
Appropriately enough for one of hockey's most gifted players ever, Lemieux's 1,700th point was anything but routine, though it wasn't a goal. It was the kind of play few others can make, even if Lemieux is 38 and no longer threatens to accumulate four or five points every night.
"It's nice to get it out of the way," Lemieux said. "Sometimes when you're going for a milestone, you try to do too much."
Joins elite club
Lemieux joins Wayne Gretzky (2,857), Gordie Howe (1,850), Mark Messier (1,847), Marcel Dionne (1,771) and Carolina Hurricanes captain Ron Francis (1,760s) on the 1,700-point list. Only Gretzky reached the mark faster than Lemieux, doing so in 711 games to Lemieux's 887 games.
Lemieux's playmaking gave a visible lift to a rebuilding Penguins team that had scored only four goals in three games. They went on to score three more goals in barely a period's worth of playing time, by Martin Straka, rookie Ryan Malone and Mike Eastwood.
Malone won't have any trouble remembering his first career goal came in the game Lemieux got his 1,700th point. Malone's father, Greg, is a former Penguins forward and was playing for Hartford when Lemieux broke into the NHL in 1984.
Bunched two goals
But the Islanders, coming off a 4-0 loss at home Tuesday to New Jersey, scored twice in a span of 2:48 of the third to tie it. Jason Blake got his third of the season and Mariusz Czerkawski evened it with his eighth and third in three games.
The four goals were the most allowed by No. 1 draft pick Marc-Andre Fleury, the Penguins' rookie goalie who began the game with the league's third-best save percentage (.947). Fleury turned aside 35 of 39 shots and has faced at least 34 shots in each of his first five NHL games.
It must seem as if that half those shots have come on breakaways, including Shawn Bates' short-handed goal that gave the Islanders a 1-0 lead. The Penguins have allowed a league-high five short-handed goals.