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30 Years Ago, Mario Lemieux Scored 15 Goals, 31 Points in The First 8 Games of the 1988-89 Season.

Blade Paradigm

Blade Paradigm

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30 years ago, Mario Lemieux scored 15 goals, 31 points in his first 8 games of the 1988-89 NHL season. Over the course of a full 80-game season, this pace would have averaged out to be 150 goals, 310 points in a season. Indeed, that was a pretty hot start for Super Mario.

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The Panther

The Panther

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That's one of the cooler pictures of Mario, I've seen. Nice.

I enjoy these "how-many-points-in-X-number-of-games" threads as much as anyone, but I wonder why there's this fixation on the start of the season. I guess there's not much else to talk about early on, but it's all arbitrary. We could be talking about most points from game 54 to game 61.
 
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shills

shills

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Truly magnificent to watch ... not only the start of that year, but throughout. Coming off an awesome 87-88 season ... this felt different, like the Mario who had torn it up at Laval had arrived in full force.

It was changing the city to a hockey town as well ... everyone wanting to see what Mario did. It was very exciting. I was lucky to go to a lot of games that year, including the "5 goals / 5 ways" against New Jersey on the afternoon of New Year's Eve.

I also vividly remember in 89-90 ... his 46-game point scoring streak and the top of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had numbers running across the top of it ... and they'd X-out another one with every game. But his back was giving him problems and that ended it ... cutting his season short at 59 games -- though he did come back for the final two as the Pens tried to make the last playoff spot. Lemieux's Streak Ends at 46 Games
 
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authentic

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I wonder what the best 8 or so game point total was from any point of the season?
 

overg

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quoipourquoi said:
Yeah, but what’s with that -1 and 0% shooting percentage in Game 1 against Washington? The season begins on October 7th not October 11th, lazy.
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Nonsense. All you've done is debunked the notion that Lemieux somehow benefited from extra rest. Projected out, it's quite clear Lemieux would have wracked up a few 300 point seasons if he hadn't sat out so many games or taken breaks in the summer.

As for 18-15-33. If you just saw that stat line presented like that, you'd think someone either had an very good 33 game run with 18 goals and 15 assists, or an extremely good run of 15 goals, 33 assists in 18 games. The reality that it's actually goals, assists, and points in EIGHT games just breaks down all notions of how NHL hockey has ever worked.
 
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BenchBrawl

BenchBrawl

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Would be interesting to read Octobre 26th, 1988 newspapers articles, see what people were saying.
 

blogofmike

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Lemieux figured it out over time, since he had 94 road points that year, which is fairly balanced.

In 84-85, Gretzky had 104 home points and 104 away points. So clearly Gretzky was even lazier at exploiting that last change.
 

overg

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What I find surprising is the relative lack of power play goals making up his totals. Out of the 15 goals he scored, only 4 were on the PP. Given Lemieux's known proclivity on the power play, I expected it to be a much bigger factor in this particular streak.

Of course, who needs power plays when you're shooting at 37.86% over 41 shots and 8 games?
 

overg

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crosbyshow said:
lollllllllllllllll Lemieux a homer....oh my god.....the guy did 160 points in 60 games...wait...just at home ??
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You might want to cool your jets on the mockery a bit. In the 90's Lemieux very often sat out one game when the Pens played consecutive nights. That could very well have affected his home/away splits. Not sure if he did that in 92-93, but it's at least fair to raise the issue with Lemieux . . . and perhaps moreso than almost any other player in history.*

*off the top of my head competition for this might be Bob Probert, who was prevented from traveling to Canada for years due to his drug arrest. That led to a lot of missed away games over a period of years.
 
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streitz

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During Wayne's 200 point seasons did he ever get off to a start like that? Without looking it up I'm sure he did but that's nearly 4 points per game, insane.
 

bobholly39

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streitz said:
During Wayne's 200 point seasons did he ever get off to a start like that? Without looking it up I'm sure he did but that's nearly 4 points per game, insane.
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No there was a thread recently about the fastest starts in October - and Lemieux actually has the top 2, or maybe even top 3, above Gretzky.

It seems like Gretzky's production throughout the year is a lot more consistent month to month in contrast.
 
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