The story of Mario Lemieux is one of the more incredible in sports history. In celebration of 30 years of Lemieux’s involvement with Pittsburgh as a player and owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has produced an excellent interactive history of his life. Written by J. Brady McCollough, this short-novel length article is well worth the time it takes to read whether you’re a fan of the Penguins, a hockey fan, or just someone who loves learning about honorable, determined, and talented people. The Post-Gazette has kindly given their readers three options for consuming this piece: read selected excerpts, the full text of the piece or browse an interactive timeline.
From a young age, Lemieux was tagged as one of Canada’s best young hockey prospects. When he was drafted and signed by the pitiful Pittsburgh Penguins, he had no idea the twists and turns and challenges that were ahead for him and the city of Pittsburgh. During Lemieux’s incredible career, he endured chronic back and hip problems as well as a bought with cancer. Lemieux was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in 1993 at the age of 27, right in the middle of his prime as a hockey player. Coming face to face with his own mortality jarred Lemieux, as it would all of us, so he decided to focus his thoughts on the subject he knew the best. While his body was being treated for cancer, Lemieux’s mind lived in its own person ice hockey rink. Here’s the excerpt from McCollough’s piece:
Lemieux had spent so many nights over the years awake, thinking about what lay ahead and what he was going to do about it. With weeks of radiation therapy staring him down, that wasn’t easy to do. So, he just thought about hockey.
“I had a big lead on Pat Lafontaine,” Lemieux says of the points race. “I would stay up at night and watch ESPN and find out how many points he got, day after day. He got a lead, and that was my goal, to come back after the last treatment and step on the ice and start chasing him. That was important for me. That was a challenge.”
On the morning of March 2, 1993, Lemieux had his last radiation treatment. He had missed 23 games, and Lafontaine now led him by 12 points with 20 games to go. The Penguins were playing that night at Philadelphia against the hated Flyers, and Lemieux wasn’t going to miss it. He hopped a charter flight and arrived at the Spectrum, surprising everyone, even NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, who didn’t have time to get to Philly from New York to witness it.
When Lemieux took the ice, the Philadelphia fans who had lustily booed him for years were now on their feet, cheering him. Having not skated for nearly two months, his body tired from blasts of radiation, Lemieux scored a goal and an assist in a 5-4 Penguins defeat. That felt remarkable, but he was just getting started.
Pittsburgh ran off an NHL-record 17 straight wins, as Lemieux set his sights on Lafontaine. Playing some of the most inspired hockey anyone had ever seen — never mind the circumstances — he scored 30 goals and 26 assists after his return to pass Lafontaine and win by 12 points.
It was one of the most unfathomable seasons an athlete has had in any sport, and for a guy who valued his privacy, all it did was pull his fans and admirers closer.
“He was a superhero of flesh and blood,” close friend Chuck Greenberg says. “He hurt, and he got sick, like real people do, and he did things that only superheroes can do.
After Lemieux retired, the Pittsburgh Penguins fell on hard times financially and their owner took the rare but not unprecedented step of declaring bankruptcy. Lemieux had structured his contracts as a player to include a lot of back-weighted money so that he could provide the most flexibility for the team to pay his teammates while he was there. The Penguins owed him over $30 million dollars, money that the current owner was not planning on paying as part of the bankruptcy settlement. This was the impetus for Lemieux to attempt something that was more than rare; something that was unprecedented — he decided to buy his old team. In what were eventually successful negotiations to do this, Lemieux ended up insisting that he take all of his back wages in equity in the team, as an exhibition of his intent to buy the team for the good of the city, not as a way to recoup his losses. And this is what he has done for the last fifteen years! Here is an excerpt from the Post-Gazette piece about the fateful night at Morton’s restaurant in Pittsburgh when Lemieux decided to try to buy the Penguins:
That night at Morton’s, it was time to discuss the options. Lemieux just listened, which was his way. Tom Reich started talking, which was his way. Reich said that the only way to guarantee Lemieux would get his money — and that the Penguins would remain in Pittsburgh with proper ownership — was for Lemieux to put together a group to buy the team out of bankruptcy. It was wild, insane even. But Lemieux considered it. They proposed the scenario to bankruptcy attorney Doug Campbell, who had the legal know-how.
“I said, ‘OK, do you have any money?’ No. ‘Do you have any investors lined up?’ No,” Campbell says. “OK, so you’re telling me a $30 million unsecured creditor who has no investors lined up is going to go head to head against two publicly-traded corporations, one of which has the master lease for the Civic Arena and the other the TV rights, and we don’t even have a telephone or an office, and we’re going to outmaneuver them legally and financially and get control of the franchise?”
Well, yes.
Go check out the full story from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and J. Brady McCollough! You won’t be sorry. Again, the three options for consuming this piece are to: read selected excerpts, the full text of the piece or browse an interactive timeline. Enjoy!