Pens ready for change

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- If nothing else, the image best reflects the changing state of the Pittsburgh Penguins: Mario Lemieux not only practiced the neutral zone trap Thursday, he endorsed the idea of playing it.
If Lemieux, the champion of wide-open hockey, is willing to trap, then surely the rest of the Penguins must be, too.
After all, they know the alternative, now that they've nearly frittered their season away: Play new coach Michel Therrien's way, or don't play at all. Even if a player wants out of town, it might be difficult to persuade another team to trade for him if he's not playing at all.
The Penguins not only shook up their bench by firing coach Eddie Olczyk on Thursday and hiring Therrien, they also rewrote the franchise's unofficial mantra: Come here and be free.
For 15-plus years, Pittsburgh has been the home of scorers, skaters and individualists such as Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, Alex Kovalev and Mark Recchi, but no longer.
That's not working, not when a team with talented players such as Sidney Crosby, Sergei Gonchar and Recchi has the NHL's second-worst record and is getting waxed by Minnesota and St. Louis.
It's time for something else, something different, something previously tried before in Pittsburgh during the Kevin Constantine days, though it never really caught on.
A system -- one called robotic even as Therrien's Wilkes-Barre AHL team was starting this season 21-1-2-1.
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