NHL Penguins' young coach trying to transform team into winners

Pittsburgh opens the season Friday at home against Los Angeles.
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- His roster is filled mostly with kids and retreads, and his top goalie has played in as many NHL games as Eddie Olczyk has coached -- none.
What Olczyk doesn't lack as he moves from the broadcast booth to the bench is a stubborn confidence that, despite all the dire predictions for the Pittsburgh Penguins, he can soon transform something bad into something very good.
His it-can-be-done personality wouldn't let him feel any other way.
Reminds Patrick of Johnson
"He's the perfect guy for what we're asking him to," general manager Craig Patrick said of Olczyk, who, at age 37, is younger than two of his players. "He is very Bob Johnson-like in his approach to life and hockey. He keeps reminding me of Bob Johnson."
Johnson was a longtime college coach who led the Penguins to the first of their consecutive Stanley Cups in 1991, only to die of brain cancer six months later.
Johnson's mantra was, "It's a great day for hockey," and his perpetually upbeat personality, coupled with his drive and commitment, helped transform the long-underachieving Penguins into champions.
Of course, Johnson had players such as Mario Lemieux, Ron Francis, Jaromir Jagr, Paul Coffey, Ulf Samuelsson, Joe Mullen and Larry Murphy to work with. Olczyk has Lemieux and not much else.
The Penguins have missed the playoffs the last two years -- finishing next-to-last in the overall standings last season -- after 11 consecutive postseason appearances. Their stable of scorers was long ago dismantled, mostly for budgetary reasons.
Pittsburgh is given little chance of contending for the playoffs, much less reaching them, even though Lemieux has decided to play at least one more season. So maybe it's fitting the NHL's most inexperienced team will have its most inexperienced coach when the Penguins open Friday night at home against Los Angeles.
Olczyk, who had never coached hockey at any organized level, had been retired as a player for only three years and was working as a Penguins broadcaster when Patrick hired him in June.
"In a perfect world, I'd love to have some experience, but it's not going to take me long," said Olczyk, the Penguins' seventh coach since the 1996-97 season.
To compensate for his lack of experience, he brought in former Blackhawks coach Lorne Molleken as an assistant. To compensate for the glaring lack of talent, Olczyk has installed his version of the neutral-zone trap.
And, yes, Lemieux -- long the most vocal proponent of offensive hockey -- is buying into it.
While putting in his system, Olczyk was everywhere in practice as he worked with his young team. It has a half-dozen players -- including overall No. 1 NHL draft pick, goalie Marc-Andre Fleury -- with little or no NHL experience. If he wasn't leading a drill, he was skating about, correcting, encouraging, yelling when necessary, though Olczyk's voice travels around the rink even when he's speaking at a normal level.
Always seeking advice
Unlike some veteran coaches, he isn't taking a my-way-or-the-highway approach. Olczyk talks at length with Lemieux -- the man he calls "My boss" -- about everything he's doing. He also doesn't hesitate to call other coaches he knows, some in the league, for advice. Colorado's Tony Granato, another broadcaster-turned-coach, is among them.
"Absolutely, he's respected throughout the hockey world," Lemieux said. "There's not one person I've met that doesn't like Edzo and respect him for what he's done over his career. That's not going to change."