Once every year in the spring, they open the roof of the Civic Arena.

Hundreds of times every winter, they raise the roof not hydraulically, but out of sheer lung busting enthusiasm.

These are hockey fans.

People on the outside, more accustomed to the polite applause in Heinz Hall, might call them hockey nuts.

Whatever you call them, these 13,000 people are among the most powerful in Pittsburgh as far as Tad Potter is concerned.

They're the people who buy the tickets, which fill the seats and pay the bills.

They're the people who can keep the Pittsburgh in front of Tad Potter's penguins.

Potter's Pittsburgh Penguins are in financial trouble.

His family has owned them from the beginning and from the beginning they've lost money.

Now because of the death of some of his partners, Potter has to raise 3 to $4 million in new capital within the next couple of months.

Jack Button is the Penn's general manager.

- ...Is a situation that we hope to be able to sell a part of the club, entice new capital and keep it right here in Pittsburgh.

The only time we would start looking elsewhere and transfer a franchise would come into play would be if, this, just wasn't, able to be done.

Now, all the screaming and yelling is just what Tad Potter needs to sell investors on buying into the Penguins.

Jack Button estimates that they need to sell 13,000 seats every home game, hopefully at a higher average ticket price, to begin making even a small profit.

That's what potential investors want to see.

The fans.

They want to see good hockey and they're getting it.

Yeah.

Georgie Papolly is a confirmed hockey fanatic.

She rarely misses the Penguins at home, along with her sister Rena and thousands of others.

She'd be grief stricken if the Penns were to move their home to some other city.

I dont know, I guess it's the, the constant action thats going on.

There's always something happening.

You're not sitting around a long time for a play to happen, you know, it's it's there all the time.

You can get right into it.

You know?

It's just I leave the game just as exhausted as the players do.

If you're not a fan, I can't explain to you why you should be a fan.

It's just something that gets in your blood.

Come on.

It doesn't take much explaining it all to the thousands who have lately been filling the arena for the Penns home games, the team has rarely played better in Pittsburgh.

Perhaps because the players like it here and they're not too anxious to leave either.

You know, for myself, I don't want to leave.

I like just sit here you know, I think, I'm just getting to the point where I accept this is my home.

Just bought a house.

I got married a year and a half ago, and my wife's down here, and we considered our home, so, you know, we don't want to leave.

Well, this morning, after that, traffic jam, I said that it wouldn't mean much, but.

No, really, I mean, not, I wouldnt miss the traffic, but other than that, I wouldn't want to leave Pittsburgh.

Hockey is big business in its own right.

But believe it or not, a healthy pro hockey team is important to everybody's business, big or small.

The Chamber of Commerce is one of the key boosters in the Save the Penns movement, not just because they like hockey.

John Rumasack is manager of their community development operation.

Let's suppose the Penguins leave.

What's that going to do to the economy of the city?

Probably very little that could be perceived by anybody at the outset, but it'll be a minus, obviously, an a minus that, is telegraphed across the rest of the country.

Pittsburgh can't support a pro team.

Hockey, as far as the chamber is concerned, it's just one small part of a very big picture.

It isn't just the hockey.

In the beginning, it was the Penguins, the Pittsburgh Penguins.

It carries the label Pittsburgh Penguins just like the other pro-teams we have, carry below the line.

And they promote Pittsburgh just by just by being a Pittsburgh based team.

This means a lot out there in the rest of the world.

And what the rest of the world thinks of Pittsburgh has a direct translation into the jobs for Pittsburgh based companies.

Hunter has to move quickly to settle the question of whether the Pens are going to move or not.

League schedules are made up in June, and if he has to sell his franchise, the NHL will have to become involved in early spring.

But Jack Button is optimistic.

With the good fan support and the performance of the hockey club.

I think that the climate and the investment potential is is very good here.

We've had a great deal of interest.

There are several different groups that have, talked to us about it or want to talk to us about it.

You know, this is something that takes a little bit of time on the part of, anybody that wants to invest some money.

They want to look at the situation very carefully.

I would say that we might have two groups right now that, are actively pursuing, let's put it, use the word financials.

And, I am certainly very encouraged that something, positive, from one of these two groups will take place oh in the next month or so.

So that the Popally sisters and thousands like them have a long month to wait.

Efforts are being made all over Pittsburgh to prove to the world and to those unnamed potential investors that our town is a hockey town, and that we need at least two different kinds of penguins here.

If we were left with just one, the consequences could be disastrous.