No. 66 Goes Out In Style Lemieux Has No Regrets Leaving Game While On Top

He was only 18, still homesick for Montreal and not yet 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 ice where he had spent much of his youth - it mattered not. Mario Lemieux began rewriting hockey history.

With 1:41 gone in the Pittsburgh Penguins’ season-opening game at Boston on Oct. 11, 1984, 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 ever since.

Hello, Pittsburgh. Hello, NHL.

“You just knew he had the gift,” former Penguins coach Eddie Johnston said. “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 injuries, a bout with cancer and two Stanley Cups 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.

“When I was growing up in Czechoslovakia, there were only two players I ever wanted to play with: Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky,” the Penguins’ Jaromir Jagr said. “I was very lucky. I got to play with the greatest player in hockey.”

The sport and Lemieux himself have changed dramatically since that memorable debut in Boston nearly 13 years ago. 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 would never be another Gretzky? Lemieux proved them wrong. Hockey could never thrive in Steelers-crazy Pittsburgh? Lemieux proved them wrong. The Penguins could never win the Stanley Cup? Lemieux proved them wrong - twice.

Now, Lemieux will try to prove them wrong once more. Naysayers argue that athletes still in their prime - Lemieux is 31 - can’t be satisfied away from sport. The lure of money, glamour, prestige and stardom, they argue, are just too great.

They point to others who quit at their peak, only to return, like Michael Jordan and Sugar Ray Leonard, and predict Lemieux will be next.

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.

As his games dwindle down to their final few, Lemieux talks as contentedly about his future out of hockey as he does his life in it.

Goodbye, Pittsburgh. Goodbye, NHL.

“I just want to be remembered as somebody who was able to take a team that was the worst in the league and was able to win championships” in 1991 and 1992, Lemieux said. “I’m quite happy with what I accomplished … happy with my place in history. Everything’s quite all right with me.”