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Her Jay
Location: Ontario for now....
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Mario Retires
He's going to be missed, especialy in Pittsburg where he was the one bright spot on an otherwise bad team. Seems all the great players from my childhood are leaving the game, Messier, Stevens, etc, not many left at all. It was a great career, thanks for the memories Mario.
Quote:
Enjoy every moment'
This time there will be no dramatic return.
Moved to walk away before and forced out on other occasions, hockey legend Mario Lemieux brought a final end to his remarkable playing career yesterday. Stricken with an irregular heartbeat, the seventh-leading scorer in NHL history announced his retirement at an afternoon news conference in Pittsburgh.
"This is always a difficult decision to make for any athlete," he said. "But I feel that the time has come. It's in the best interests of myself, my family and the Pittsburgh Penguins."
"Mario's exceptional play earned him accolades," NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said in a statement. "His ability to face adversity earned him respect. His devotion to Pittsburgh and the Penguins earned him admiration. His dedication to hockey -- at both the NHL and international levels -- earned him the enduring appreciation and thanks of everyone associated with the game."
Limited to 26 games this season, the 40-year-old Hall of Famer still managed seven goals and 15 assists. After a career full of injuries, Lemieux said he was no longer able to perform at the level he desired and, still battling to control his heart troubles, he decided to call it a day.
"Any time you play a sport for so many years -- you know it's been a part of my life since I was three years old -- and to have it taken away, [it] is difficult to accept but we all have to go through that," Lemieux said. "I have some experience at it ... but this is it. And it hurts."
"I talked to him this morning, and he's obviously kind of more or less relieved than anything that he's going to put some closure to it," said Toronto Maple Leafs forward Tie Domi, a friend of Lemieux. "He's one of the best all-time players, and he's such an ambassador for the game. We're going to miss him."
Lemieux finishes with 690 goals and 1,033 assists in 915 games, but those numbers hardly sum up his career.
"He's been a marvelous guy for our game, obviously both as an athlete and as a person ... his presence will be felt for a long time," said Maple Leafs head coach Pat Quinn, who coached Lemieux during the 2002 Olympics.
Lemieux was drafted first overall by the Penguins in 1984 and quickly set about saving a moribund franchise. After famously scoring on his first shift, he became only the third rookie to score 100 points and brought fans back to a neglected team.
Yesterday, he called the new NHL a young man's league and implored today's stars to appreciate their gifts.
"All I can say to the young players is enjoy every moment of it," he said, pausing as emotion overwhelmed him. "Just enjoy every moment of it. Your career goes by very quickly. It's a great game, and you guys are all very special to be in the NHL and very privileged. So enjoy every minute of it."
"I watch him every practice to see what he does," said Sidney Crosby, Lemieux's heir apparent and current housemate, "but it is more incredible to see how he handles himself off the ice."
The new generation will be hard-pressed to match his accomplishments.
After winning the Calder Trophy, awarded to the league's top rookie, Lemieux went on to claim two Stanley Cups, six Art Ross trophies for leading the league in scoring, three Hart trophies as the league's most valuable player and two Conn Smythe trophies as the playoff MVP. He amassed 160 or more points four times in his career, including 199 in 1988-89, his fifth season in the league. Only Wayne Gretzky has reached the 200-point mark in one year.
Lemieux, though, would never quite have the opportunity to join Gretzky. He missed 21 games the next season with back problems and, after off-season surgery, the first 50 games of the 1990-1991 season.
He returned to score 89 points in 49 regular-season and playoff games as he led the Penguins to the first of two straight Stanley Cups.
Midway through the 1992-93 season Lemieux was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease, a cancer of the lymph nodes. He returned on March 2, 1993, the last day of his radiation treatment, to score a goal and an assist against Philadelphia.
And he kept coming back -- after back surgery in the mid-'90s, after a 3 1/2-year retirement (brought on by his frustration with the state of the game) at the end of the decade, and after the year-long lockout that ended this summer.
But where Lemieux could once step onto the ice and make people forget he was ever gone -- he had a goal and two assists the night against Toronto the night he ended his first retirement -- he has appeared a step behind this year, when healthy.
It is his health that is a problem now. He was sidelined by an atrial fibrillation, returned Dec. 16, and was stopped again when the condition re-appeared during his first game back in Buffalo.
"After that night, I really started thinking about my future and what's best for my health and my family," he said yesterday.
Lemieux had another episode with his heart on Monday night and he said he is leaning towards surgery to correct the problem.
"I've done pretty much everything that I wanted to do in the game," he said, "and winning two Stanley Cups really allows me to leave the game in peace."
He was seen as the Penguins' saviour when he arrived in 1984, and again in 1999 when he moved into an owner's role and kept the team in Pittsburgh. Earlier this month, Lemieux announced he would be selling the team. He will leave it with a core of young players, headlined by Crosby, the franchise's next saviour.
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Absence makes the heart grow fonder
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