Ville Nieminen is having a really rough time coping with being traded to the Penguins. It's all over his face. Right there in that wide smile, those sparkling eyes, those animated hand gestures, that booming and playful voice.

"I'm happy. Very, very happy," he said yesterday in a tone loud enough to echo off the Southpointe locker room walls. "You can see that, right? I am so happy."

Nieminen, a left winger as gregarious as he is gritty, was the main acquisition when the Penguins sent defenseman Darius Kasparaitis to the Colorado Avalanche at the NHL trading deadline Tuesday.

And if any aspect of the transaction is troubling him, he is doing a remarkable job of concealing it.

Asked if he harbors any ill will toward the Avalanche or General Manager Pierre Lacroix for dealing him less than a year after helping that franchise claim the Stanley Cup: "They got a very good player, and good luck to them. If I would be a general manager, I would do that deal, too. They have to do whatever they feel makes their hockey club better. I'm forgetting it already."

Asked if he is worried about replacing Kasparaitis, one of the most popular players in the Penguins' history: "I know he's great and I know everybody liked him here. That's my challenge here. I like people, and hockey is my way of connecting to people. I want that to happen."

Asked if he will have difficulty adjusting to new surroundings: "I have to learn where the restaurants are and the roads. That's all. I want to learn everything about Pittsburgh, the people here, everything. I want to make this my home."

Craig Patrick, the Penguins' general manager, had scouted Nieminen intermittently for four years and was convinced he would be a good fit on and off the rink.

"He's got just a great personality, a real outgoing guy," Patrick said. "What we liked most about him is that you can see his passion on the ice. He works hard and he likes to go to the net. We feel he's got a really bright future here."

Patrick wasn't alone. He said that even after he acquired Nieminen, several Western Conference general managers called to try to pry him away.

"They're the people who get to see him the most, so that tells you something," Patrick said. "I don't think they liked playing against him."

It doesn't figure to take Mellon Arena patrons long to see why.

Nieminen, 24, makes a habit -- no, an obsession -- of driving his 6-foot, 200-pound frame hard to the goal. That much was evident in his Penguins debut, a 3-1 loss Wednesday to the Phoenix Coyotes, as he kept his elbows up, stick high and head low to repeatedly invade goaltender Sean Burke's crease.

Although he failed to register a shot or point, he raised the eyebrows of his teammates.

"Great player," linemate Aleksey Morozov said. "He's fast, he sees the ice, he moves the puck, and he's great in the corners. But the important thing for our team is that he's good in front of the net. We need guys like that. When you play with players who go to the net, you know you always have a chance to score if you can get the puck there."

Some have compared Nieminen to the Detroit Red Wings' notoriously net-bound Tomas Holmstrom, but Patrick isn't fond of that.

"Ville's got better hands. I think he'll be able to score more goals."

Nieminen has modest numbers this season, 10 goals and 14 assists in 54 games. But half of those goals won games for the Avalanche, including Colorado's last three victories before the trade. He also was a clutch performer in the playoffs, scoring one winning goal and setting up another in overtime.

Which might explain why he generally shrugs off talk about his style of play so matter of factly.

"The way I look at it, if you want to score game-winning goals -- not just goals -- you have to do it from 5 feet out. And if you don't get there, you can't score from 5 feet out. So, you have to find a way to get there. It's always hard. It can be miserable. You can get hurt. But you have to do it."

Once there, Nieminen has a tendency to yap relentlessly in a bizarre hybrid of English and his native Finnish which he calls "Finnglish." But he seems puzzled by why so many opponents find that trait so annoying.

"I don't know how I can make anybody mad by me talking because I don't think they understand me, anyway."

Nieminen's fun-loving personality got him into trouble in September when he reported to Colorado's training camp overweight, the result of having spent most of his summer partying with the Cup.

"I still worked out, but it was more about being burned out from the long season. My mind and body couldn't keep up. I felt very stressed out by the time I got to camp. I thought I could it put it all behind me when I got there, but I couldn't."

The Avalanche scratched him for 12 of the first 39 games and used him only sparingly when he dressed. But Nieminen's fortunes -- and productivity -- improved in the second half, which he attributes to the birth of his first son, Viljami, in late December.

"I feel so much better since then. I had one goal before that, nine goals after. It seems like everything has been good since then."

Even being traded.

"To me, a good way to look at this is that I know there were a lot of teams who called Colorado to ask about me, and I have a feeling this is the one that wanted me the most. I really believe that. I believe this is the right place for me. I'm happy to be in Pittsburgh."

Has he mentioned that he's happy?