In 1988-89, Lemieux had his finest individual season, just missing entering Gretzky's private 200-point club he finished with 199 points on career-highs of 85 goals and 114 assists. That season, Lemieux scored 168 points, breaking Gretzky's domination of the MVP and scoring titles. He had ripped up his reputation as someone who was lazy and lax when the going got tough and replaced it with the respect of the world's best players. Lemieux, who scored a series-leading 11 goals (many on feeds from Gretzky), emerged from the Canada Cup a decidedly different young man. In the 1987 Canada Cup, Lemieux took a pass from Gretzky and, with a flick of his wrists, scored the goal that broke a 5-5 tie against the Soviet Union and won the tournament for Canada. "Without Lemieux, they pack up the team and move to another city," said Edmonton Oilers boss Glen Sather. Perhaps more significantly than turning the Penguins into a competitive team, he brought financial stability to the Pittsburgh franchise, with attendance increasing by 46 percent, from 6,839 to 10,018 a game. 99 turned upside down) went on to win the Rookie of the Year award, scoring 100 points, with 43 goals. 11, 1984, in his first game, on his first shift, on his first shot, he notched his first goal. He solidified his legendary status by scoring 11 points in his final game.Īs expected, he was the first selection in the 1984 NHL draft. At 18 he scored a record 282 points, with 133 goals, for the Laval Voisins in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. Mario dropped out of school at 16, with a 10th-grade education, to concentrate on hockey. "If Mario lost, it would be as if a hurricane went through the basement," said his father, Jean-Guy. "By the time I was 12," he said, "I knew I had a lot of talent." He started skating when he was 2 or 3, and played his first game at 6. His parents packed snow wall-to-wall in the front hallway of their house so Mario and his two brothers could practice skating indoors. 5, 1965 in Ville Emard, a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Montreal. Winning scoring titles wasn't enough for him. With advancing age, he found it more difficult to avoid the holding and hooking, the clutching and grabbing that prevented him from performing with his accustomed skill. In 1992 he had called the NHL a "garage league," and it hadn't gotten better since. Not so much for health reasons, but because of his frustration with the sport's direction. In 1997, the reclusive Lemieux, at the age of 31, walked away from the game, the goals and the glory - on his terms. "Whether you like it or not, it's always going to be there." "It's always in the back of your mind," Lemieux said. The Magnificent One did it knowing that little lump he found on his neck might not just end his career, but also his life. In his final two years, after sitting out the 1994-95 season because of the crippling pain in his back, coupled with strength-sapping anemia caused by radiation treatments, Lemieux won two more scoring titles. That is the stuff that answers people these days when they wonder where all our sports heroes have gone." "And since: Lemieux has achieved miraculously in remission, struggling, on the side, with a back injury so grievous that it has benched him after he merely laced up a skate. "Notwithstanding Gretzky's abiding majesty, posterity will never forget that no athlete - not even the sainted Lou Gehrig - has ever before Lemieux been struck down by a deadly disease at the very moment when he was the best of his sport at the best he ever would be," wrote Frank Deford in Newsweek. They also have come back from life-threatening illnesses.
#Mario is missing 18 game pro
Pro athletes have returned from serious injury before. He saved a floundering franchise in Pittsburgh and led the Penguins to back-to-back Stanley Cups, winning MVP playoff honors both years.īut Lemieux's most remarkable feat is overcoming Hodgkin's disease, a cancer of the lymph nodes that had taken the life of one of his cousins, and a debilitating back injury. 823 (613 goals in 745 games) is the best for players with 150 games. Lemieux is the only player to average more than two points a game (2.01). With his puck-handling dexterity, long reach and accurate shot, Lemieux won three Most Valuable Player awards in the NHL and six times was its leading scorer. In the late 1980s and early '90s (when his health permitted it), the 6-foot-4, 220-pound center surpassed Wayne Gretzky as the most prolific scorer in the world. He was born, like others of French heritage, with the surname Lemieux, which translates into "the best." Only Mario, though, was possessed with the talent to live up to the name.ĭogged by injuries and frustrated with the way he saw the NHL was being run, Mario Lemieux skated away from the game in 1997 at a relatively young age of 31.
0 kommentar(er)
