ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 13, 1997 TAG: 9704150019
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-10 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PITTSBURGH
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mario Lemieux is looking forward to living a more private life with his family when he leaves the ice. His last regular-season game is today.
He was only 18, still homesick for Montreal and not accustomed to the October-to-May grind of the NHL. The limited English he learned in French-speaking Quebec was spoken with a heavy accent, and he was nervous about his new town, new team and new life.
Once he took to the ice - the friendly, reassuring place where he had spent much of his youth - it mattered not. It took Mario Lemieux less than two minutes to begin rewriting hockey history.
There was 1:41 gone in the Pittsburgh Penguins' season-opening game at Boston on Oct.11, 1984, when Lemieux jumped off the bench for his first shift just as Bruins defenseman Ray Bourque attempted a pass in the neutral zone.
More by luck than by skill, Lemieux got his skate on it, and the puck bounded wildly toward the Boston goal. Lemieux rushed up ice to retrieve it and, almost miraculously, found himself breaking in on goaltender Pete Peeters.
Then, just as now, it was a mismatch.
Lemieux feinted Peeters to his knees, then abruptly shifted the puck to his backhand and flipped it into the sliver of open net the goalie had abandoned. On his first shift, on his first shot, in his first game, Mario Lemieux had scored, and he has kept scoring.
Hello, Pittsburgh. Hello, NHL.
``You just knew he had the gift,'' said Eddie Johnson, the former Penguins coach. ``You just knew he was one of the great ones. He's always had that knack. He scored the first time he took the ice in practice. He scored on his first shift in the first exhibition game. He just always came up big at the biggest times.''
Five scoring championships, three MVP awards, more than 600 goals, innumerable games missed because of injury, a bout with cancer and two Stanley Cup championships later, Lemieux returns to Boston today for his final regular-season game.
Then, after the playoffs, he will retire to the golf course and his fast-growing family, still young enough to enjoy the money he has made and the reputation he has forged.
``When I was growing up in Czechoslovakia, there were only two players I ever wanted to play with: Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky,'' said the Penguins' Jaromir Jagr. ``I was very lucky. I got to play with the greatest player in hockey.''
The sport and Lemieux himself have changed dramatically since his debut. What hasn't altered is No.66's undeniable impact on the game he first played at 3, skating on frozen ponds and sidewalks near his home in Ville Emard, Quebec.
There never would be another Gretzky? Lemieux proved them wrong. Hockey never could thrive in Steelers-crazy Pittsburgh? Lemieux proved them wrong. The Penguins never could win the Stanley Cup? Lemieux proved them wrong - twice.
Now, Lemieux will try to prove them wrong again. Naysayers argue that athletes still in their prime - Lemieux is 31 - never can be satisfied away from sport. The lure of money, glamour, prestige and stardom, they argue, are just too great.
But Lemieux, who covets privacy as much as Dennis Rodman commands publicity, insists he is different. Weary of too many lonely days away from wife Nathalie and their three children, of the nightly uncertainty whether he would be pain-free enough to play, Lemieux has had enough.
``I've been playing some good hockey, but my mind has been made up for quite awhile and it's hard to change now,'' Lemieux said.
Penguins owner Howard Baldwin, the Hollywood producer who perhaps should start working on a film of Lemieux's life, holds out hope that his best-known employee will change his mind.
``Gordie Howe returned when he was 44,'' Baldwin said. ``But what [Lemieux] has done for the sport transcends sports. What he has overcome - you will never see more courage than when he came back from radiation treatments [for Hodgkin's disease] and still won the scoring title. You will never see that again.''
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS. Mario Lemieux waves goodbye to theby CNBfans in Miami after the Penguins beat the Florida Panthers 4-2 on
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