“[And ticket sales, which sagged in recent years in the league's oldest and least fan-friendly arena, soared after Pittsburgh won the No. 1 pick Friday in the NHL draft lottery. The Penguins sold scores of season-ticket packages Friday night to fans from 10 states and Canada, even though ticket-buyers had to wait 45 minutes on hold just to get an operator.] We're on Cloud 9, ... This has probably been the (team's) greatest 24-hour period since 1984.”
“We've been making payments steadily whether there was a work stoppage or not or whether we made money or not. That's just the way we do business. There's absolutely a sense of pride.”
“We knew we would have an exciting team because we have some good young players, and we planned to be active in free agency, but we didn't expect sales to be like this,”
“We have done this in the backdrop of knowing and hearing that no one has any money from the public sector for an arena. That is no small challenge. But we have come up with a way to pay for the entire cost of building a new arena with not a nickel of taxpayer money.”
“It would be pretty hard to question 'Why not do this? It's a great opportunity to get a new arena. ... We don't need state money. They can put the state money to other uses. We're offering to build the arena at no cost.”
“I hope none of you expected Mario to own this team forever. He's done more than he should ... and he's teed this up perfectly for the community to jump at a great opportunity for this team to stay here.”
