On the final day of the American Hockey League season two months ago, defenseman Brooks Orpik, the Penguins' No. 1 pick in the 2000 NHL Entry Draft, was asked to describe the organization's expectations of him, to identify the facets of his game he had been told to improve.
"Good question," he replied. "They haven't told me much, which is kind of a surprise to me. Communication is not something they're really good at up here."
Orpik was referring to the coaching staff of the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, the NHL Penguins' primary minor-league affiliate. But he added that he also had not heard from anyone in Pittsburgh.
"I don't know what to tell you," he said. "They haven't told me much."
His story is not unique. Many players who spent time in Wilkes-Barre in the past three years, including some now on the Penguins' NHL roster, have spoken of the lack of instruction and communication at the minor-league level.
It is fairly simple to quantify the Penguins' recent failures in the NHL Entry Draft, just as criteria can be found to illustrate a lack of quality. But identifying talent is just the first of two steps critical in transforming a player from amateur prospect to NHL contributor. The second, development, is markedly more difficult to measure.
Two years ago, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton reached the Calder Cup final before losing, making its second AHL season an overwhelming success. This past season, the Baby Penguins finished 20-44-13-3, second-worst in the league. In that span, they graduated six drafted players who finished this past NHL season with the Penguins: Andrew Ference, Tom Kostopoulos, Milan Kraft, Josef Melichar, Toby Petersen and Michal Rozsival.
That is a fair amount of NHL talent for any AHL team to produce in such a short time, although the Penguins' glut of injuries was the major factor in some of those promotions this past season.
"You look at the players that have made it up there, and we take pride in that," said Glenn Patrick, the head coach at Wilkes-Barre/Scranton since the franchise's inception in 1999 and the brother of Penguins General Manager Craig Patrick. "Those were guys who were good players for us."
Glenn Patrick is one of two full-time coaches in Wilkes-Barre. The other is Mike Yeo, who was named an assistant two years ago shortly after an injury ended his playing career there. The Penguins employ twice as many coaches on their staff in Pittsburgh, but it is not unusual for AHL teams to have only two. That was the case for 19 of the 27 teams in the league last season.
What is unusual is the apparent lack of teaching at the minor-league level.
Most NHL teams have roving instructors who work mostly at the minor-league level, often breaking it down by position. The Penguins have a roving goaltending coach in Gilles Meloche, who doubles as a Quebec scout. They used to have Ed Johnston, the assistant general manager, spend much of his time in Wilkes-Barre on individual instruction, but that ended early last season when he joined the NHL coaching staff full-time after Rick Kehoe replaced Ivan Hlinka.
"On a regular basis, no," Craig Patrick replied when asked if the team sends someone to Wilkes-Barre for individual instruction. "Gilles goes in once in a while, but he goes there just for the goaltenders. Greg Malone goes there, too, but it's not as much for teaching as it is to keep track of what's going on."
Malone is the Penguins' head scout.
Patrick said he has no plans to add a member to the organization's staff to replace the role Johnston used to fill.
"No, we haven't considered that at this point."
Glenn Patrick acknowledged that his team's practices focus little on individual attention.
"That's what the time after practice is for, when players are free to work on what they want."
He also said there is little discussion of individual expectations during the season. "We let everyone know what we expect of them at the start of the year."
He added that no special emphasis is given to the Penguins' high draft choices. "Everybody on this team gets treated the same, whether they're a first-round pick or a 10th-round pick."
When the Penguins launched their AHL franchise in Wilkes-Barre, officials at all levels of the organization raved about the opportunity to control and monitor development in a way that was not possible when they shared minor-league affiliates with other NHL teams. To that end, it was determined that the strategic system employed by the coaches in Pittsburgh would be the same as the one used in Wilkes-Barre, thus preparing the AHL players for a smoother transition to the parent club.
But that practice began to fizzle no more than a year after the Baby Penguins came into being, and it was completely gone before the start of the 2001-02 season.
"When they had the team that went to the Calder Cup final, they liked the system they had and stayed with it this past year," Johnston said. "Pretty much everything in the whole organization was out of whack, anyway, with all the injuries we had here in Pittsburgh and the way we had to change our styles here to adjust."
That much is going to change next season.
During the first two rounds of the recently completed Stanley Cup playoffs, the Penguins' coaching staff, including Kehoe, scouted games in the Western Conference with an eye toward building a new system for next season. The plan is to create a hybrid of the defensive game prevalent in the East with the more aggressive tactics that dominate the West.
"We're trying to get a little bit of both," Johnston said. "We want to have not only a run-and-gun like we've had before but also take care of the defensive part of the game."
And, unlike the past two seasons, the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton coaching staff will be required to follow suit. Glenn Patrick will meet with team officials before the start of training camp in September to be briefed on the details of the new system.
"We've got to do the same thing all the way through," Johnston said. "That way, all the players know exactly what they have to do and what's expected of them."
Glenn Patrick is keenly aware of the criticism that has been aimed at the Baby Penguins' program, in Pittsburgh and in Wilkes-Barre, where the fans who filled the First Union Arena for all 39 home games were bitterly disappointed at the team's precipitous fall in the standings.
"That just comes with the territory," he said. "That's why winning is so important, at all levels of the organization. Winning takes care of everything."
NOTE -- The Penguins will have 11 picks in the nine-round draft Saturday and Sunday, according to an NHL list released yesterday. Their slots will be 5, 35, 69, 101, 136, 137, 171, 202, 234, 239 and 265. They will have two choices each in the fifth and eighth rounds. The 136th pick, in the fifth round, is compensation for losing goaltender Garth Snow to the New York Islanders through free agency last summer. The 239th pick, in the eighth round, is compensation for losing defenseman Marc Bergevin to the St. Louis Blues.
Poor communication, instruction hamper Penguins' prospects 
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