I am a Ranger fan who started watching hockey in 1985 at 13 years old. I saw alot of Mario Lemieux.
Every time I saw Pittsburgh on the schedule, it filled my heart with dread the way on old sailor would look out on the sea when a Nor'easter was in his path. You would see the game and worry about it for days. You wouldn't even think about the games in between... You couldn't take your thoughts away from it, because you knew he was coming.
I wondered when the league would amend the rule and just allow him to put the third 6 on his sweater.
What were we going to do? All the Jan Erixons, James Patricks, and Willie Hubers in the world were not going to save us.
Le Magnifique was coming...
When he got there, it wasn't as bad as you thought it was going to be.
It was WORSE.
At the end of the game, the garden ice looking like a civil war battlefield with bodies strewn about, sounds of agony from men who's lives had been forever altered by the chaos that had come to pass on that evening, Mario always managed to assert his will on the game.
Whether you won or lost, Mario was going to Mario.
He was like the final boss on a video game, except you were never going to beat that boss. You would never finish that game. It would haunt you for the rest of your days...
As for me, having yet to know the true misery that only a woman can deal you, and too young to drown it in whisky, there was only the pain. It would ruin the rest of my week, and make me question why I willingly subjected myself to this agony. I would hurl curses at Lemieux into the darkness, only to have my neighbors shout back to shut the f*** up and go to bed.
Until the next time.
Mario Lemieux is the most physically unstoppable player who has ever held a hockey stick in his hands. All this talk of "era adjusted" stats isn't counting for this. This man scored nearly 200 points when you could do almost anything to stop him. The very best players in the world of that day would routinely play the fool, little more than the canvas upon which the master would deliver his latest latest masterpiece.
Lemieux, the artist, with the equipment of today and the medical advancements that could have held off the things off the ice that kept him down...
Lemieux, unable to be chopped, hooked, or waterskiied upon...
Lemieux, with no center redline or two line pass...
There are no records in this game that would be out of reach.
I say this as a man who has hated #66 and the mention of his name for my entire life. He is the f***ing GOAT.
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