Penguins Cup Chronicles: Wendell Young

Wendell Young may not have played any games after Feb. 26, 1991, but he still played a key role for the Stanley Cup champion Penguins.

As co-host of the team's "hospitality suite" alongside injured right wing Joe Mullen, Young helped keep the team loose and strengthened the bonds that already existed.

A team that appreciated banter — in the locker room and on the ice — the Penguins carried that over to their postgame time together. After each road game, the players gathered back in the hotel for beer, card games and some laughs.

"Some teams, there's a bunch of pockets within the team and they go their own way, but we hung out as a team," Young said recently. "As much as we're around each other, traveling and in the room, we actually hung around together even when we didn't have to. It says something about our team."

Young was finally cleared to return for the Stanley Cup Finals, but the strong play of fellow goaltenders Tom Barrasso and Frank Pietrangelo meant it was unlikely for him to be in the lineup.

Before Game 6, Young remembers the locker-room talk of trying to avoid a return to Pittsburgh for Game 7.

"You know, Mario (Lemieux) didn't say a lot. He kind of just looked up and said, 'Boys, there will be no Game 7.' If Mario says there's no Game 7, there will not be a Game 7. What did we win — 8-0 that night?" Young said with a laugh. "Tom Barrasso gets a sidenote. Tom Barrasso's unbelievable; I think he had 40-something saves that night, too, but it was just a domination of 8-0. We weren't losing it that night."

Q&A with wendell young

@box-text :On the potential for a Stanley Cup:

We knew how much talent was on the team. We knew we had a good team; we didn't know how good a team we had, and I think that's the biggest thing. I think with any championship team, there's not a lot of teams that predict that they're going to win at the beginning of the season and win the Stanley Cup. I think we're all a little curious of how the team's going to come together. There's been a lot of teams that have had a lot of talent but never put it all together. I think, luckily, we were a little hesitant until we saw what kind of team we had.

On the change in atmosphere:

When you put experience like (Bryan) Trottier and (Joe) Mullen in the dressing room, the great leaders, they're not the screaming leaders, they're the calming leaders that go out and work hard every day and great guys, and everyone kind of followed a lot of their lead. Especially with Trots, with all the championships he had previously, he kind of was a calming force with everyone. We had a fairly young team, and we went out and followed the lead. With the talent and everything, any championship, things fall in place, and they seemed to fall in place for us.

On coach Bob Johnson:

Bob wasn't a yeller. I remember a game I think we lost, like 8-0 at home, and I thought we were going to get in a lot of trouble from him after the game. He comes in, and he actually told us he saw some good things in the game, and we were kind of like, "What?" Actually, there was a time there where we're going, "Hey, Bob's going to start getting mad at us" because he's got to get us going here, but he had a plan, and he knew what it was. He knew that we would play together as a team, and he didn't need to scream. I think one time he said "gosh darn," and we were starry-eyed at him, like "Oh, Bob's really mad." But he was the perfect guy because he was upbeat, and it's a long season and you can get down pretty fast, but he was an upbeat guy, and that's the biggest thing with him. He was always positive. Just by his, "It's a great day for hockey," his slogan, coming in the morning and seeing him ride the bike and he was cheery as anything and he's doing laps with the guys. He was that upbeat guy that you needed all the time. You didn't see him mad too often. He always saw good. He was that coach that, things could be really bad, but he was the positive side. As athletes and most hockey players are pretty critical of ourselves a lot of times, he always saw the good stuff.

On the three-goalie system:

Among the three of us, we thought somebody was going to leave, and I ended up getting hurt in February, so I was pretty well gone for the season after that, coming back from a dislocated shoulder. It actually worked out well that they didn't trade anybody. Frank (Pietrangelo) came in when Tommy (Barrasso) was hurt in the Jersey series and really was the turning point of our Stanley Cup run.

On the relationships of the three goalies:

I didn't see it that way. Me, Frankie and Tommy got along really well, and we were always cheering. I got along with all the goalies I played with for the sole reason that I hoped they did well and I hoped I did better when I played, because if they did well, we were going to win, and I just hoped when I was in there I did better and got a chance to play some more. We were really supportive of each other, me and Frankie especially, fighting for that backup spot. I fought every day of my career to stay playing pro hockey or stay in the NHL. I don't think it was any more added pressure. I just did what I had to do. That was the whole thing with our group — we were a tight group, including the goalies. There was no animosity or anything amongst us.

On the absence of ego problems on the team:

It's funny because that "24/7" (reality show) is on now, and they're saying how loose the dressing room is there. Some present-day players were talking about it, and I said, "Well, it's a good thing we can't go back 20 years when I played; it was probably worse than that." We were a fun group to be around, a fun group on and off the ice, and actually some funny things on the ice, just comments guys were making on the ice. But when the puck got dropped, it was serious business, and I think that's the greatest thing about our team. Any championship team I've been on, we were close on and off the ice, we had a bond, most of us, that we backed each other up and we were together as a team.

On banter among teammates:

That stuff happened all the time, comments being said. We had a funny group. We had a really funny group, and nothing was sacred in the dressing room. It was always entertainment. And it made coming to the rink really fun. Going to the rink sometimes is tough. If it gets monotonous when you're going to the rink, it's a really tough job, physically and mentally. I loved going to the rink because something funny was going to happen there every day. We look back and we say we should have wrote down everything that happened and everything that was said because it was just little comments and little things with guys. You couldn't do anything — you had a pimple, you were going to get picked on. It was as simple as that. That's the whole thing: It wasn't personal. It was just a funny thing because you're just going back and forth with each other.

On his dislocated shoulder suffered against Los Angeles:

It's a sad thing, because I stopped (Wayne) Gretzky on the play, and on the rebound, (Tomas) Sandstrom went to jam it around the net, I stuck my arm out to stop the puck, and all of a sudden I felt a funny feeling in my shoulder and arm, and I didn't know what it was. I didn't feel much pain until about five minutes later, and then it was really bad because my shoulder was out. I think it was like 6-1 or something; if they would have scored, that would have made it 7-1, so I guess it wasn't that critical of a save to pop out a shoulder.

On the hospitality suite he co-hosted with Joe Mullen:

Whatever it took to help the team out. Even when I see the guys, they're still laughing about the hospitality room because it was a place where all the guys could come and hang out and they didn't have to worry about anything. We're in the public spotlight so much, (but) guys could actually sit in their room and relax and laugh and we had card games. Basically, we just hung out and had a chance to relax, it was always after the games, all the pressure and all the build-up for the games and everything like that, win or lose, we went back and kind of refocused within the room. It was one of those things that we don't talk so much about the on-ice, but the off-ice stuff. That was one of the things that brought everyone together. If a guy was having a bad day and he had a bad game, well, by the time he left the room, he had a smile on his face. We just laughed, and you couldn't help but laugh in that room.

On off-ice relationships leading to on-ice success:

Absolutely, it translates onto the ice. That's the thing — teams sticking together, guys feel bad about themselves and they feel like they let the team down if they have a bad game, especially from the goaltending side, if you had a bad game. If you're hanging around, all of a sudden you realize, "Hmm, these guys aren't holding it against me." Sometimes you think guys are going to hold it against you if you have a bad game. Once you're together, they'll try to pick you up, and that was what we did within the hospitality room. It was just us being together and picking each other up.

On lifting the Cup with a bad shoulder:

I would have risked popping my shoulder out again to lift the Stanley Cup.

On winning a Stanley Cup:

People always ask, "What's it like to win the Cup?" I say, first of all, you buy a lottery ticket. It's the same kind of feeling. You always hope to win, but you never think you would. You buy lottery tickets, you're always hoping, but in reality you never think you're going to win it. I cashed out my lottery ticket. That's exactly what happened with winning the Cup. I dreamed of it but never really thought it would happen.

On what it means to be a part of a Stanley Cup-winning team:

It substantiates your career, I think. It's not the defining moment of your career because there's a lot of guys who played the game who never got their name on it. It's almost humbling, in fact, that you feel fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time and on the right team. Because there have been some great players that haven't been in the right place or on the right team, so it's really humbling. But the cool part of it is that my kids get to see it. The Stanley Cup was here in Chicago this year and friends of ours who are part of the organization, (Kevin Cheveldayoff) the assistant GM with the Hawks, had been my GM for 11 years with the Wolves. For my 10-year-old to see my name on the Cup and stuff like that, we went over to the celebration and no one was allowed to pick up the Cup, there were hundreds of people there, basically I had carte blanche to pick it up. Because if your name's on it, you get to pick it up. It was kind of a cool thing, you see all the names that are on it — and you're amongst those names.

Additional Information:

Wendell Young

ACQUIRED : Sept. 1, 1988 • Philadelphia trades Young and seventh-round pick (130th overall) for 1990 third-round draft pick (47th overall).

PENGUINS DEBUT : Oct. 7, 1988, at Washington

PENGUINS 1990-91 STATS : 18 games, 4 wins, 6 losses, 2 ties, .879 save percentage, 4.04 goals-against average, 773 minutes

PENGUINS CAREER STATS : 111 games, 42 wins, 47 losses, 5 ties, .876 save percentage, 4.14 goals-against average, 5,576 minutes

WHAT HE'S UP TO NOW : General manager of Chicago Wolves (AHL)