King Kaufman's Sports Daily

The NHL ducks a two-handed slash as the Penguins reportedly agree to stay in Pittsburgh. Plus: Live curling!

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March 13, 2007 | It's news around here whenever the NHL gets something right, so let's hear it for the Pittsburgh Penguins and their reported new arena. Several media outlets in Steeltown are reporting that the team will announce a deal Tuesday with local and state officials for a 30-year lease on a new $290 million building that will open in 2009.

The club announced last week that negotiations were at an impasse and stepped up public flirtations with other cities, particularly Las Vegas, which has been campaigning hard for a pro team in any sport, and Kansas City, which is looking for tenants for a new arena. Houston has also been in the mix.

Pittsburgh's Mellon Arena is the oldest in the league, and the Penguins have suffered there. The team has struggled to earn sufficient revenue from the outdated building. It went into bankruptcy in the late '90s and was only saved by a takeover effort by star player Mario Lemieux.

For all that, Pittsburgh remains one of the better markets in the NHL. With an on-ice revival led by 19-year-old Sidney Crosby, who this weekend became the youngest player in history to record two 100-point seasons, the Penguins waddling off to possibly become the latest NHL hockey town-to-Sun Belt city failure story was just about the last thing the league needed.

Well, that and another vicious on-ice assault, which it got Thursday night on Long Island when Chris Simon of the Islanders leveled Ryan Hollweg of the Rangers with a two-handed stick swing. Hollweg wasn't seriously injured. Simon was suspended for the rest of the season Sunday. Business as usual in the NHL, which is averaging about one of these incidents every other year -- and keep in mind the league lost a year.

When the Penguins announced the impasse last week, word was that commissioner Gary Bettman would get involved. That's never encouraging news, but it looks like Bettman, who lacks the power to force the Penguins to accept a particular deal but can make it difficult for the team to move to another city, did some good.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that the Penguins will pay $3.8 million a year toward construction, plus $400,000 per year toward capital improvements.

Next page: This could have been a privately funded arena. Plus: Curling championships on the Web