Pens winding down final season in Igloo

Associated Press

PITTSBURGH, PA.

The visiting team’s dressing room is so small and cramped, goalies dress in a separate room from their teammates. Lockers? There might be a few down the street at the YMCA.

Inside the oldest indoor arena still used by a major American pro sports team, the concourses are far too narrow for 2010-sized bodies, the concession stands far too scarce, and nearly all modern amenities are missing.

Go to the rest room, and you might miss half a period. Sit down, and you’ll likely be occupying a bright orange seat that was installed in 1961.

Still, Pittsburghers will be more than a little nostalgic when the Penguins play the last of their 1,667 regular-season games at 49-year-old Mellon Arena, the old barn affectionately known as the Igloo, against the Islanders tonight.

More than 50 former Penguins players will return to celebrate, including Andy Bathgate, who scored the franchise’s first goal on Oct. 11, 1967.

“There’s a lot of, I feel, history here and memories, good games and bad games,” Penguins coach Dan Bylsma said. “There’s a lot about this building I’m going to miss.”

An engineering marvel to this day, the arena features a retractable steel roof, a concept designed and implemented long before anyone thought of putting such a lid atop a football stadium.

In addition to the Penguins, the arena played host to thousands of concerts, from the Beatles, Elvis Presley, the Doors, Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones, the Jackson 5 and Bruce Springsteen to Streisand, Sinatra and the Beach Boys, some in the open air.

Hundreds of basketball games were played at the Civic Arena; it was Duquesne’s home court for nearly 20 years, and the first national high school basketball all-star game, the Roundball Classic. Over the years, various expansion projects raised the capacity from 10,500 to 16,940.

But it was the Penguins who supplied most of the arena’s signature moments. From the blown 3-0 playoff series lead against the Islanders in 1975, Mario Lemieux’s arrival as a No. 1 draft pick in 1984, and the subsequent drafting of stars Jaromir Jagr, Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, hockey kept the arena going far longer than many such buildings last.

Lemieux has been the arena’s most prominent personality, progressing from an 18-year-old rookie who could barely speak English into one of the NHL’s biggest stars and, later, the Penguins’ co-owner. The Penguins won two Stanley Cups with No. 66 as the star, in 1991 and 1992, and another last year with Lemieux as the co-owner.