MARIO MAGIC
TODAY: NOS. 1-3 Remembering the 10 most memorable feats in the career of Mario Lemieux.
Perhaps the most succinct assessment of Mario Lemieux’s playing career is that he made the remarkable look routine.
He regularly pulled off feats that most players couldn’t even imagine, let alone execute.
Consistently did things that defied logic, determined defenders and, occasionally, a few laws of physics.
And Lemieux did some of his most memorable work under the most demanding of circumstances. Not only when the stakes and pressure were highest, but when his health was far from its best.
Or, much of the time, anywhere close to good.
Which brings us to the top three entries on the list of his 10 most memorable onice accomplishments: 3 The 1990-91 season had a beginning that Lemieux surely would prefer to forget, and a finish he will cherish forever.
After sitting out the first 49 games while recovering from back surgery and a subsequent bone infection that imperiled his career, Lemieux led the Penguins to the franchise’s first Stanley Cup in the spring of 1991.
Never mind that, at times in that postseason run, he was unable to tie his own skates because of lingering issues with his back.
The often-excruciating pain didn’t prevent him from accumulating 16 goals and 28 assists in 23 postseason games, a performance that earned him the first of two Conn Smythe trophies as playoff MVP.
For most players, it would have been the achievement of a lifetime.
For Lemieux, it barely earned a bronze medal. 2 Lemieux put together a 46-game scoring streak, five shy of Wayne Gretzky’s NHL-record 51-gamer, in the 1989-90 season.
The truly remarkable thing, however, was not the streak itself, but what Lemieux endured to construct it.
When he finally was held pointless Feb. 14, 1990, at Madison Square Garden in New York, it was not due to an inspired defensive effort by the Rangers, but because of back pain so debilitating that Lemieux almost literally could not move when he was on the ice.
He adjourned to the locker room in the game and sat out the 21 that followed, not returning until the regularseason finale March 31, when he had a goal and an assist in a 3-2 overtime loss to Buffalo that knocked the Penguins out of playoff contention. (And, it turned out, positioned them to draft Jaromir Jagr.)
During his 46-game run, Lemieux scored 39 goals and assisted on 64 others. 1 Lemieux was enjoying the most extraordinary season of his career in 1992-93. He would put up 39 goals and 65 assists while appearing in 40 of the Penguins’ first 42 games and had Gretzky’s single-season records of 92 goals and 215 points squarely in his crosshairs.
And, it seemed, very much within his reach.
Then came the most jolting medical diagnosis of his career.
And for a change, it had nothing to do with his back. It was much worse. Cancer. Hodgkin’s Disease, to be precise.
The news was devastating.
But Lemieux, while understandably shaken, reacted with typical understatement.
“It’s always tough,” he said, “when you get cancer in the middle of the season.”
Yeah. Hate when that happens.
Lemieux had a comfortable lead in the NHL scoring race when his illness was revealed to the public on Jan. 12, 1993, but by the time he returned after a regimen of radiation treatments, he trailed Buffalo center Pat LeFontaine by a dozen points.
Which, it turned out, wasn’t nearly enough of a cushion.
Lemieux, who played a game in Philadelphia hours after his final treatment, picked up 30 goals and 26 assists in his final 20 appearances to finish with a 160-148 edge on LaFontaine.
He ended up with 69 goals and 91 assists in 60 games, which means his totals over the 84-game schedule the NHL played that season projected to 97 goals, 127 assists and 224 points.
Even more striking, his post-cancer run — when he was supposed to be weakened by the radiation therapy he had gone through — projected to 126 goals, 109 assists and 235 points over a full season.
The numbers Lemieux could have put up had he ever been healthy for a full season during his prime will never been known, of course.
They might have been good enough to put him far ahead of everyone, including Gretzky, in the NHL record book.
Which doesn’t necessarily mean they would have earned the top spot on this list.