Jul 12, 2002 3 min read

PITTSBURGH (AP) – The Pittsburgh Penguins will face their own version of March madness this season: a month chock full of games – 16 – mostly against the league’s toughest teams. But the Penguins, who are coming off a 28-41-8-5 record which caused them to miss the playoffs for the first time in 12 seasons, got some help from the NHL’s schedule maker, too.

They’ll play 16 Saturday home games, which tend to be more popular with fans than weeknight games, up from only three last season. They have three home games over the popular and lucrative Christmas-New Year’s holiday stretch. And they play only 15 back-to-back contests – down from 17 last season – the better to rest superstar/owner Mario Lemieux’s tender back.

“Symbolically, this begins next season for us,” said Tom McMillan, vice president of communications and marketing. “We’re excited about it. We were hoping to get more Saturdays, and we did. We were hoping to get fewer back-to-backs, and we did.”

Still, the daunting March stretch caught coach Rick Kehoe’s eye.

“Yeah, that’s a tester right there at the end, isn’t it,” Kehoe said. “No question we have to be in a good position heading into that month. It’s going to be tough, but that’s what we’re going to have to do to get back to where we belong.”

The March madness begins with two tough road games against the Colorado Avalanche and Dallas Stars. The Pens will also play the Stanley Cup Champion Detroit Red Wings and the team the Wings beat in the finals, the Carolina Hurricanes, later that month.

The Penguins will play Atlantic Division archrivals, the Philadelphia Flyers, four times in March. Two Flyers’ games will bookend a five-game road trip on March 20-29 during which the Penguins will also play the New Jersey Devils, Chicago Blackhawks and New York Rangers.

“On one hand, you don’t want the guys worrying about something that far ahead. On the other hand, you know they’re going to see that and be aware of it,” Kehoe said.

The Penguins will save some energy, however, because they won’t travel to western Canada for the first time since 1995, when the schedule was cut due to a lockout by the owners. The Penguins won’t play road games against Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver or St. Louis.

The Stars, the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Minnesota Wild are the only teams that won’t play at Mellon Arena.

Fans will get their first chance to boo former Penguins defenseman Darius Kasparaitis, traded to Colorado late last season before signing with the New York Rangers in the offseason, at the second home game of the season Oct. 12. The Penguins open the season at home Oct. 10 against Toronto.

Robert Lang, who joined former Penguins superstar Jaromir Jagr by way of free agency earlier this month, will return to Pittsburgh when the Washington Capitals visit Oct. 28.

The NHL’s 1,230-game schedule opens Oct. 9 and ends April 6, the earliest finish since the 1991-1992 season – the year the Penguins won their second, and last, Stanley Cup.