HOCKEY Lowly Penguins optimistic

They finished last in the standings, but could get the first pick in the draft.
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Never have the Pittsburgh Penguins felt so good about a season that was so bad.
The Penguins' three-season free fall following their 2001 run to the Eastern Conference final bottomed out, as they finished last in the NHL standings for the first time in 20 years.
In 1984, last place was the best thing that happened to the franchise; it netted them Mario Lemieux with the No. 1 draft pick. In 2004, the Penguins have a nearly 50-50 shot at winning today's draft lottery and getting Russian Alexander Ovechkin -- to some scouts, as good a forward as there's been in the draft since Lemieux.
But there are perceptible differences between those dreadful Penguins of 1984 (16-58-6) and those of 2004 (23-47-8-4).
Young team this year
That 1984 team was a hodgepodge of players long past their prime and others who never had one. The 2004 team had enough young players with promise to suggest the Penguins' days as NHL bottom feeders will be brief.
"I think everybody is looking forward to next year already," rookie forward Ryan Malone said.
For three-quarters of the season, they weren't. General manager Craig Patrick and rookie coach Eddie Olczyk seemed to have badly misjudged the talent level of the prospects and young veterans who emerged from the years of salary dumping that shed Jaromir Jagr, Robert Lang, Alexei Kovalev and Martin Straka.
The Penguins weren't just the NHL's worst team, they were threatening to be one of the worst in league history. After 62 games, they were 11-42-5-4 amid an 18-game, 43-day losing streak that was the longest in NHL history. It wasn't a league record only because it included an overtime tie.
They also went from Dec. 29 until March 6 without winning in Pittsburgh, an 0-15-1 slide that included a league-record 14-game home losing streak.
But a Feb. 25 victory at Phoenix that ended the tortuous 18-game streak, plus the little-noticed but invaluable late-season pickups of defenseman Ric Jackman (Toronto) and forward Lasse Pirjeta, energized them for the final quarter of the season.
Remarkably, the Penguins finished 12-5-3 -- easily the best turnaround by an NHL team in a season that included a winless streak of 15 games or longer.
Learning season
"We definitely learned how to win," Malone said. "Early in the year, we'd win a game, then come out lackadaisical or a little off. After we got that win in Phoenix we developed a couple of strides ahead of where they thought we'd be."
The goaltending situation, muddled for months as the Penguins wrestled with whether to keep No. 1 draft pick Marc-Andre Fleury and pay him a $3 million contract bonus, solidified when Fleury was sent back to juniors. After that, Sebastien Caron and Jean-Sebastien Aubin settled in and played solidly down the stretch.