ALTOONA, Pa. -- Troy Loney tells a great story about getting to have the Stanley Cup shipped to his hometown in Alberta for a few days after winning it in 1991, and just how memorable it was to help the Penguins capture their first championship.
But when it comes to memories, a big part of what makes the 1991 Stanley Cup championship so special to someone like Loney is this: He had experienced first hand for several years just how difficult it had been for the franchise to climb that giant mountain before finally reaching the pinnacle of the NHL.
"I look back at it as the years before," Loney said during this week's Memory Lane podcast, which can be heard in its entirety below. "There aren't too many of us that were here with the Penguins the years before we won the Cup, so people that haven't been around the Penguins that long maybe don't quite appreciate the challenges and the struggles that the Penguins had."
Oh, there were plenty of challenges and struggles. The Penguins debuted in 1967 and had just four winning seasons over their first 20 years -- bottoming out at 16-58-6 in 1983-84. Loney was drafted with the 52nd overall pick in 1982, made his NHL debut in 1984 and didn't make the playoffs until the 1988-89 season.
There also were the financial issues and concerns about the team's future in Pittsburgh back then.
All in all, the Penguins had a lot of problems on and off the ice for many years, and that even included a period after they drafted the great Mario Lemieux in 1984.
As Loney talked about the "challenges and struggles" of the Penguins back then, he added this:
"Not only as an NHL team trying to prove their worth, but also as a sports team in Pittsburgh."
Pittsburgh, of course, had become known as the City of Champions, with the Steelers and Pirates having tremendous success.
But the Penguins were not part of all that. Not even close.
"I could tell that the team had been struggling for years, couldn't really find an identity," Loney said of his impressions upon joining the Penguins. "I wasn't sure kind of how that would work. My first NHL game that season, I think I probably had more people in our arena for my junior hockey team than we did in Pittsburgh. It was, whatever, 3,000 people, 4,000 people. So that was a little bit of a surprise.
"But it was definitely something that the city -- you could just feel -- liked the idea of the hockey team and what it could do for the city and kind of the work ethic and all that kind of stuff. So it was interesting to be part of that early in my career."
All of this is just part of the backstory of what made it so very, very special when the Penguins, led by the phenomenal Lemieux, finally broke through during the 1990-91 Stanley Cup season.
They all knew entering that season that the team was poised to do something special. Right?
Nope.
"No, no," Loney said. "You're thinking, 'Hey, we made the playoffs (two years earlier), let's get back to the playoffs.'
"And during that season, if my memory serves me correct, we were not playing very well for the first half of the season. ... We were kind of up and down."
The Penguins went 41-33-6 in 1990-91, did make the playoffs and then got on a roll. They beat the Devils, Capitals and Bruins to get to the Stanley Cup Finals, where they downed the North Stars, four games to two, to capture the franchise's first Stanley Cup.
Loney's favorite memory from that night clinching the Cup?
"We're up (8-0), the clock just couldn't go fast enough. ... For the last minute or two on the bench it was just amazing because we knew it was gonna happen, and just that countdown to the last few seconds and then winning and getting on the ice. I remember that vividly.
"And then coming back to Pittsburgh on the plane was a great celebration. Going into the airport and coming out of the gate ... and seeing the amount of people that were there, that was truly special because there were more people there probably at the gate than the first NHL game I played in here in Pittsburgh."
Players do have an opportunity to request getting the Stanley Cup to take home with them for a day, which has to be one of the coolest things in sports.
Here's the story Loney told about his personal time with the Cup.
"I asked for the Cup to take it back to my hometown -- small town, 1,000 people, middle of Alberta. They ship it in a crate that came to the Calgary airport. I go to pick it up with my dad and my brothers, and we have it in the back of my dad's half ton, sharing it with my whole town for a weekend as we did a golf tournament and raised some money for some really cool stuff.
"But just to see my old neighbor, who lived and breathed hockey and had a son drafted by the Canadians, around the Stanley Cup and having a chance to drink out of it. And then you come to Pittsburgh, where people are really trying to understand, What is this hockey, the Stanley Cup thing, and what do you mean you can have access to it? What do you mean it's kind of shared with everybody? It was fun."
There's so much more in the Loney interview for Memory Lane, from the Penguins winning the Stanley Cup again the next season, to the disappointment of not three-peating despite having a great team in 1992-93. Loney also discusses Mario Lemieux in great detail and what it was like to play for the expansion Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, a team owned by Disney and named after the famous movie.
You can hear the entire discussion below.
