For the Pittsburgh Penguins and their 37-year-old owner, the 2002-2003 NHL season has been a power play fiesta. Pittsburgh scores over half its goals on the power play, with Mario Lemieux usually starting or finishing the job. The NHL's new campaign against interference is giving them plenty of opportunity.

Lemieux looks like a big, slow, old man until he gets the puck, when he displays smarts, agility and puck-handling skills others can only dream of. Even more fun than watching him pass and shoot is seeing him play "keep-away," twisting and spinning from defenders like a boy hogging the puck on a frozen pond. If he can play 60-65 games he will win the scoring title.

The NHL's defensemen are not especially appreciative of Lemieux's gifts or the help he's getting from the referees' strict new standards.

"They're ruining the game, no matter what Mario says," Chris Chelios of the Detroit Red Wings, told the Detroit Free Press. "Hockey is horrible to watch now with all the stoppages and the whistles. All these prima donnas crying about their hooking and holding: Fight through it! Hockey's a great game. They're ruining it with whistles."

Chelios has built his 19-year career around many tactics that are suddenly illegal: the stick in the jersey, the bear hug, the seemingly accidental collision. He's not the only one. Many defensemen are finding themselves penalized for stuff they have been doing all their lives. Guess they'll just have to fight through it.

So you are awarded an NHL franchise and your choice of any player in the league to help get you started. Who do you pick? Lemieux? Sakic? Lidstrom? Theodore?

Try someone younger, healthier and as good as or better than any of the above: Joe Thornton of the Boston Bruins.

Thornton would be an easy MVP choice right now if Mario wasn't devouring penalty killing units across the continent. Thornton is second in the scoring race, leads the NHL in even-strength points and is near the top in just about every other category that matters.

The Bruins are first in the East, partly because they have plenty of scoring and good goaltending, but mostly because Thornton is unstoppable around the net. Scoring a recent goal against Montreal - stealing the puck, bulling his way to the net and deking Theodore - he looked like a man toying with a minor hockey team.

Even the model franchise falls on occasional hard times. Last year the Colorado Avalanche started slowly, but injuries to Peter Forsberg and Milan Hejduk provided an excuse and Patrick Roy bailed them out. This year they are healthy, so why do they look so underwhelming? Maybe because the power play stinks, they don't play well at home and Roy has been a bit wobbly. Without Joe Sakic this team would probably have a losing record. At least one anonymous Av has complained to the media about coach Bob Hartley. Not a good sign.

You can hardly ask a new, young defenseman to take the blame for all this. So why does Derek Morris' name keep coming up? Because the Avalanche gave up Chris Drury to get Morris. Drury was apparently popular with fans and team mates, and had a reputation for scoring big goals. Colorado is a big goal short on too many nights this year.

Unwilling to lose pots of money and burden themselves with the fat contracts of useless free agents, the San Jose Sharks are the NHL's poster boys for fiscal sanity. General Manager Dean Lombardi has built a winner without imitating the spendthrift ways of the dumbest franchise in pro sports (the Rangers, if you must ask).

A strict budget tends to make contract negotiations difficult, which is why the Sharks, widely viewed as a Stanley Cup contender, began the season without their top goaltender, Evgeni Nabokov, and a key defensemen, Brad Stuart. Both were unsigned, looking for more money.

The team stumbled through October, undone by bad goaltending and shoddy defense. Nabokov and Stuart returned too late to help salvage November. On December 1 the 13th place Sharks fired head coach Darryl Sutter and his assistants. Sutter might be forgiven for thinking that fiscal sanity is all well and good until somebody loses his job.

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