Eddie Johnston, the general manager who drafted Mario Lemieux 40 years ago this month, had only one concern when he announced the historic selection at the old Montreal Forum: and it wasn’t whether Lemieux would wear a Penguins jersey over his head.
Lemieux did not.
Ironically, Lemieux’s first act with the Penguins was to distance himself somewhat from a franchise he would spend the next four decades personifying, influencing and owning on and off the ice.
“It was his agents, not Mario; he didn’t want to do it,” Johnston said. “Mario and I never talked about that. Not that day. Not until today.
“I had done my homework. Now you hear about generational perspectives. No, Mario was not generational. He was once in a lifetime, and not only as a player, but also as a person.
“We (the penguins) are not here without Mario.”
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Maybe you’ve heard something similar before. For those unfamiliar, consider the circumstances in Pittsburgh that preceded Lemieux’s arrival in 1984:
- The Penguins were nine years away from bankruptcy.
- They averaged fewer than 8,500 fans during the 1982-83 season, when they finished with just 45 points and a goal differential of -137 despite a sixth-best 81 power-play goals.
- They practiced on the track at a suburban high school, then one of the few in Pittsburgh.
- They had never gotten past two rounds of a postseason and were best known for two crushing playoff losses to the New York Islanders: a blown 3-0 lead in the 1975 series and a 3-1 third-period lead in an overtime loss in a postseason. decisive fifth game in 1982.
- Its owner, Edward DeBartolo, Sr., favored selling the franchise to support the most successful and popular at the time, the Pittsburgh Spirit, an indoor soccer team that also played at Civic Arena.
“When I played for the Oilers, we loved coming to Pittsburgh,” Paul Coffey said. “It was a great sports city. There were Steelers jerseys and Pirates hats everywhere. All the same colors, that black and gold. We were playing the Penguins, and the games weren’t very competitive, to be honest, and I was telling the guys after the game when we were having some blowups, ‘Man, if they ever find out about the hockey thing here.’ , this will be a destiny.’
“Well, they figured it out. The answer was Mario. “I don’t think any player in our game has meant more to a city or franchise.”
That’s a big statement, although it comes from a former teammate of Lemieux, Wayne Gretzky and Steve Yzerman, so Coffey, a Hall of Famer like those three, is a qualified expert. And it’s not like Coffey is the only one who thinks this way.
Scotty Bowman, the NHL’s most successful coach, won one of his nine Stanley Cup championships behind the bench with Lemieux’s Penguins in 1992. The Penguins had won their first title in 1991, and Lemieux, who was coming off surgery back in 1990 that diminished his surprise. -My God, and he only allowed him two more seasons playing in at least 70 games, he had been nicknamed the new “Mr. Hockey” by Sports Illustrated after averaging 2.05 points per game en route to back-to-back Stanley/Conn Smythe Cup victories.
“That was what people called Gordie Howe,” Bowman said. “To give that to Mario, and he deserved it, was special.”
He and the Penguins were arguably at their best, even with his sore back. He began the 1992-93 season with 39 goals and 104 points in 40 games before missing two months after being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease (now called Hodgkin’s lymphoma).
He returned after eight weeks of treatment and virtually no ice time, to score 30 goals and 56 points in his final 20 games.
“He wanted Wayne’s record (for points in a single season),” former Penguins great Kevin Stevens said, referring to Gretzky’s 215 points. “I was going to delete it if you ask anyone on our team.
“If Mario didn’t have cancer that season, he could have scored 100 goals and 230 points. I’m not kidding. And we win the Cup again and he becomes the best of all time, even above Wayne.”
In the decades-long debate over Gretzky or Lemieux, Gretzky wins virtually everywhere except Montreal and Pittsburgh. It is in Pittsburgh where Lemieux is universally viewed as the greatest, and not for his three Hart Trophies, six Art Ross Trophies and those two Cup victories.
“He’s Paul Bunyan in Pittsburgh,” Bryan Trottier said. “I mean, there’s so much to Mario’s story that you wouldn’t believe it’s real.
“He was never healthy when I got to Pittsburgh (1990). He had his back. He had cancer. His hips were a disaster. He couldn’t tie his own skates. Despite everything, he remained the best player in the league, but he went further with Mario.
“He literally made the penguins what they have become.”
Again, maybe you’ve heard something similar before. For those unfamiliar, consider the circumstances in Pittsburgh after Lemieux’s Hodgkin’s disease diagnosis in 1993:
- He played only 22 games in 1993-94 and did not participate in the 1994-95 season.
- He returned to capture another Hart Trophy, his third, and two more Art Ross Trophies, his fifth and sixth, but retired for three-plus seasons after the 1996-97 season.
- He was not paid for most of a record deal at the time due to the owners’ financial problems.
- Amid ownership conflicts and crippling debt, the Penguins filed for bankruptcy for a second time and were at risk of being relocated or dissolved in the late 1990s, with Lemieux their largest creditor.
“The Canadiens and the Rangers were willing to pay him $25 million to play for them for a season,” Johnston said. “He could have done it and made most of his money. But there was no chance. Not Mario.
“The penguins meant too much to him.”
So after doing what was once thought impossible by matching the Penguins in popularity with the Steelers and Pirates in the early 1990s, Lemieux ended the decade by forming an ownership group to buy them out of bankruptcy. A feel-good story, except the previous owners had received money for renovations to the Civic Arena instead of participating in the sports facility legislation that Pennsylvania politicians passed for the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia teams. Lemieux owned the Penguins, but they remained in a bleak financial situation, especially with Jaromir Jagr’s hefty contract and an unfavorable revenue deal at their stadium.
“Things didn’t go very well even after he had control of our team,” said Mike Lange, the longtime voice of the Penguins. “I’ll tell you, if Mario doesn’t come back in the year 2000, I don’t know if we’ll last long enough for ‘The Kid’ to come many years later.”
Lange is referring to Sidney Crosby, “Sid the Kid,” whom the Penguins first drafted in 2005. A lot was asked of Crosby, but it was nothing compared to what had been asked of Lemieux.
“Not even close,” Crosby said in 2016. Crosby briefly played with Lemieux before the latter retired for good in 2005 and spent a couple of seasons living in Lemieux’s guest house.
“I mean, when you think about everything we have here – this (practice) facility, the (current) arena, the expectations – it all comes from what he did for the Penguins. It’s something special with Mario and this franchise. I don’t know if people outside of Pittsburgh really appreciate what it is. It’s unique. You just don’t see it very often.”
Michael Farber, who wrote often about Lemieux for Sports Illustrated, cited Babe Ruth with the New York Yankees and Bill Russell with the Boston Celtics as the only athletes comparable to Lemieux in terms of influence on a franchise. Unlike Lemieux, both ended with stints elsewhere: Ruth as a player for the Boston Braves, Russell as coach/general manager of the Seattle SuperSonics.
Lemieux remains a minority owner of the Penguins.
Its ownership group was sold to Fenway Sports Group a few years ago, but Lemieux kept a fractional stake. He is not involved in any day-to-day decisions. However, as was evident when he returned to retire Jagr’s jersey last February, there is one Penguin who stands head and shoulders above them all.
The Penguins carefully planned Lemieux’s participation in Jagr’s jersey retirement ceremony. He didn’t want to take anything away from Jagr’s big night. Still, when it came time to introduce Lemieux to a sold-out crowd at PPG Paints Arena that night, extra time was scheduled because the Penguins’ game night operations team anticipated that fans would want to give Lemieux a long run. standing ovation.
They did it. They always do it.
“Of course it is,” Trottier said. “It’s not just that Mario was a great player for Pittsburgh fans. They saw him deal with health problems. They see that his charity works with local hospitals. They know he saved the team twice.
“And, let’s be honest, the Penguins became the Penguins (big, high-flying, high-scoring stars like Jags and Crosby and (Evgeni) Malkin) because of Mario. The identity of the franchise is still based on what he was and did.”
Mario Lemieux waves to the crowd at Jaromir Jagr’s jersey retirement ceremony in February. (Justin Berl//Keynote USA/Getty Images)
Forty years after drafting Lemieux, Johnston shared his only concern that day at the Montreal Forum. He had planned to announce his election in his native language, French, but he feared his excitement would “spoil it.”
It did not.
“I spent a lot of time telling Mr. DeBartolo how special Mario was. He finally said, ‘Eddie, he’s just a man; No one can live up to what you’re telling me,’” Johnston said.
“I said, ‘Just look. Mario is going to be the best thing that has happened to this team. They’ll still be talking about him long after we’re gone.’”
They are, and perhaps no one captured Lemieux’s importance to the Penguins better than Farber.
“Ruth and Russell are very good company,” Farber said. “Even if you want to just watch hockey, you come to Wayne, like you always do when you talk about Mario. But Wayne belonged in the sport.
“Mario belongs to the Penguins. And he has since he finally put on that jersey.”
Lemieux donned the Penguins badge a few days after the 1984 NHL Draft. There is a photo of him standing atop Mount Washington, with the Pittsburgh skyline in the background.
Johnston loves that photo.
“Mario, wearing our shirt, our city, that’s all you see and it’s perfect,” he said.
(Top photo: Allsport//Keynote USA/Getty Images)
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