As of Dec. 31, the transfer of majority ownership of the Penguins from Mario Lemieux and Ron Burkle to Fenway Sports Group is officially complete.
Members of Fenway Sports Group arrived in Pittsburgh on Tuesday, meeting with the Penguins' management and other members of the staff following the Penguins' practice in Cranberry.
Tom Werner, chairman and one of the founders of Fenway Sports Group, was one of the members in attendance of the Penguins' game against the Blues at PPG Paints Arena on Wednesday and met with select members of the media at first intermission to discuss Fenway Sports Group's vision for the team and more.
Werner called it a "privilege" to be involved with the Penguins.
"This is an iconic club with a great history," he said. "First of all, to work with Mario Lemieux, I mean, I've been a hockey fan all my life. He's one of the greatest hockey players ever, and he's a classy guy off the ice. ... We looked at this as being something that we are very happy with the team right now with the play on the ice."
As far as the day-to-day hockey operations, don't expect much to change. Werner said that Fenway Sports Group gives "a lot of the responsibility" to the people who manage the clubs they own. He said that the ownership group can impart wisdom with some aspects of the day-to-day operations from the experience they gained from managing football, baseball and NASCAR teams, like experience with medical and training staffs.
For the most part, though, they trust the staff currently in place. Werner sounded especially high on Mike Sullivan, calling him "outstanding, a student of the game ... one of the great coaches in the NHL."
"We've got great confidence in (Brian Burke and Ron Hextall) and Sullivan and we're going to be in communication with them," Werner said. "We certainly expect to have daily discussions with them, but we've got great confidence in them. It's not up to me to decide who's the forwards and who's the goalie."
Fenway Sports Group has bigger-picture visions for the team and its impact on the city, like with developing the empty space that currently occupies the former Civic Arena site. They met with new Pittsburgh mayor Ed Gainey and Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald on Wednesday about the possibilities for that land.
"We're going to work with the community groups," Werner said. ."One of the things that I said is we like to under-promise and over-deliver. We don't have a timetable right now, but we think that if you look back at that development parcel in a few years, (it) will be quite different than what it is now."
If some of the day-to-day operations were up to Fenway Sports Group, though, there is one thing they'd like to see happen with the team moving forward: Keep this core intact.
"As it relates to (Kris) Letang and (Evgeni) Malkin, we know that they want to stay here, and we'd like them to stay here. We know what they mean to Pittsburgh. Beyond that, I'll leave it up to Hextall and Burkie."
The Penguins are a team that spent to the salary cap under previous ownership. I asked Werner if that's something that could potentially change moving forward, and he said it won't.
"No," Werner said. "If you have money, and you have brains, hopefully you'll be successful."
And this is a team that Fenway Sports Group still believes has a window to be successful.
"I'm a fan and I'm also, you know, somewhat intelligent about hockey," Werner said. "I believe that the Penguins have a chance to win the Stanley Cup this year. There's no dominant team that that I think is the class of the field."
That commitment and investment in winning excites the rest of the team moving forward.
"I think they're excited about our team," Sullivan said Tuesday. "And that excites me, because I know these guys are every bit as invested as our last ownership group in trying to try to help us win championships. That's what drives us, each one of us, every single day when we get up in the morning."
