The Hockey News Archive
The Pittsburgh Penguins suffered through a mostly disappointing season this year. But in this major feature from The Hockey News’ May 18, 1984, edition (Vol. 37, Issue 33), writer Tom MacMillan wrote about the Penguins and their interest in a top-ranked junior star by the name of Mario Lemieux.
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Lemieux was far and away the top youngster available to the Penguins as they picked first overall in 1984, and his reputation already preceded him.
“You look at the guys who have been great players out of this league – (Guy) Lafleur, (Pierre) Larouche, (Mike) Bossy — he’s broken every record they have,” Penguins GM Eddie Johnston told MacMillan. “We need that big, dominant guy, and this guy’s presence is felt. He’s got great skills. He’s doing things tonight you can’t see. It looks like we’re going to take him, It’s 99.9 percent… He’s the best player in the country.”
Of course, Lemieux went on to be the best player in Penguins history, and eventually, the owner of the franchise. Nothing that any other player did that year made the Penguins want to draft anyone else.
“We’ll get some good offers but I’m still solid,” Johnston said. “I will wait until I get to the draft table June 9. But nothing any team’s going to give me is going to sway me. I’ve had guys say, ‘we’ll give you six players.’ I tell ‘em ‘stick it in your ear.’ “
MARIO HAS THE MAGIC
Vol. 37, No. 33, May 18, 1984
By Tom MacMillan
Eddie Johnston was talking fast for Eddie Johnston, no insignificant feat in the history of oral communication.
“Somegamesthisguyisjustawesome,’’ came the words, compressed against their will into one spectacular syllable.
Johnston, the general manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins, delivers his speech at 78 rpms in normal conversation, but the topic this night was Mario Lemieux, an 18-year-old hockey player with lightning in his wrists. The words arrived in a fast-forward blur.
“You look at the guys who have been great players out of this league — Lafleur, Larouche, Bossy — he’s broken every record they have,” Johnston was saying between periods one night at the Centre Sportif Laval, home of Lemieux and the Voisins of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. “We need that big, dominant guy and this guy’s presence is felt. He’s got great skills. He’s doing things tonight you can’t see. It looks like we’re going to take him, It’s 99.9 per cent. This guy can come in…it’s like bringing in a (Mike) Rozier. He’s the best player in the country.”
The National Hockey League will examine its standings June 9 in Montreal and present the last-place Penguins with the first pick in its entry draft of amateur players. It is at this moment that Johnston is expected to invest his job and the future of his franchise in the Montreal-born Lemieux.
Should he fail to accomplish the appointed task, Johnston will return to Pittsburgh and be dipped in the Monongahela River until his face turns blue.
“It’s amazing how many people write you letters – you got to draft him,’” says Paul Martha, Penguin vice-president and general counsel. “They know who Mario Lemieux is.”
They know because the Penguins have been serious candidates for the No. 1 pick overall since the first day of training camp in September and because Lemieux set flames to the QMJHL record book with 133 goals and 282 points in 70 games. While editing the record accomplishments of Guy Lafleur (130 goals) and Pierre Larouche (251 points), the 6-foot-4, 200-pound center steered the Voisins to a 54-16 record and the QMJHL regular-season championship as well as an appearance in the playoff championship against the Longueuil Chevaliers, which was tied at two apiece as this issue went to press.
Still, Johnston must weather trade winds whistling down from the Canadian north, where Montreal and Quebec plot regular Lemieux strategy.
“Our scouts are unanimous that he’s the closest thing to (Wayne) Gretzky,” says Marcel Aubut, president of the Quebec Nordiques, fanning the trade rumors.
But Johnston is holding on, resisting.
“We’ll get some good offers but I’m still solid,” he says. “I will wait until I get to the draft table June 9. But nothing any team’s going to give me is going to sway me.
“I’ve had guys say ‘we’ll give you six players.’ I tell ‘em ‘stick it in your ear.’”
“It’s obvious we’re going to draft him,” says Martha. “E.J.’s been up there several times and he’s met with Mario’s family and his agent (Gus Badali, who also represents Gretzky). We feel confident we can sign him.”
The Penguins cannot afford not to sign him. For 17 of the most undistinguished seasons since grown men began chasing little black discs across frozen ponds, they have been Team Mediocre, playing generic hockey, testing Pittsburgh’s sports sanity.
This year, their second straight in 21st place in a 21-team league, the city’s hockey fans rebelled. The Penguins averaged a league-low 6,839 customers for their 40 home games and owner Ed DeBartolo spilled $5 million worth of red ink on his three-piece suit.
“If we don’t soon get a winning team,” Martha told David Fink of the Pittsburgh PostGazette in early April, “the question becomes whether to sell or move the franchise. We’re operating at a tremendous debt already. At some point, that has to change.”
Enter Lemieux, the property deemed most valuable among North American amateurs by National Hockey League Central Scouting. He cannot become the singular salvation of the franchise — to expect this from one so young is beyond reason — but the Penguins view him as a start, a marvelous foundation.
“We’re very, very happy to have the opportunity for perhaps the first time in the history of the franchise to draft a player the calibre of Mario Lemieux,” Martha says.
The Penguins also have two other selections in the first round, an accomplishment that very nearly compensates for the trade that dispatched their No. 1 pick in 1979 to Washington for Hartland Monahan and the trade that sent their No. 1 pick in 1981 to Montreal for Rod Schutt. And the absolutely stupendous trade that shipped last year’s No. 1 pick — eventually No. 1 overall — and George Ferguson to Minnesota for Anders Hakansson, Ron Meighan and the North Stars’ No. 1 selection.
“That’s over with,” Johnston says of the Penguin fascination for dealing number ones. “We’re not doing that stuff no more. Clubs get better on first-rounders. Look, if we didn’t trade away our first pick last year, we’d be sitting on (Pat) LaFontaine and Lemieux right now.”
It was on the night of March 26, following Laval’s 3-1 playoff victory over Granby, that Lemieux first encountered Johnston in the flesh.
“He said, ‘You will love Pittsburgh,’ and he told me he’s not going to exchange his pick,” Lemieux remembers.
Lemieux is asked, in the wake of previous reports, if he is disappointed.
“No,” he says, “because it is an NHL team. It’s hard, you know, to start with a team that is last, but they have young guys on the team. I see in the paper they (drew) 3,000 people against the (New Jersey) Devils. We have to build this team. I prepare myself to go there.
“Is that a nice city?”
Pittsburgh waits, the way Laval waited in 1981, when the Voisins were dead last in the QMJHL and Lemieux was the top midget draft choice in the province. Pittsburgh has heard the tales, the legends. It thirsts for such a hockey hero.
“He controls the tempo of a game,” says Jim Gregory, the director of NHL Central Scouting, enlarging Pittsburgh’s dreams. “He’s such a good passer. When he’s got the puck, he makes things happen. He doesn’t normally play aggressively, but if someone challenges him, he’ll let them have it.”
Still, Lemieux has detractors, among them NHL scouts, who jab him for his lack of skating speed, for his poor defense, for the quick temper that costs him needless penalties.
“I see two things that have to be improved,” says Bob Pemo, who is the right-hand man of Gus Badali, Lemieux’s agent, in Montreal. “One is his defensive game. We’re not hiding anything. Most super scorers have weaknesses on defense. We’re sure the team that drafts Mario will have competent coaches to teach him the defensive aspects of the game.
“Two is control of his temper. He’s extremely, extremely proud. That pride sometimes costs him with regard to penalties. He hates to lose. Sometimes the crowd thinks he’s spoiled because of temper tantrums. He’s not spoiled. He just hates to lose. In the pros, he’ll have to adjust. It won’t be easy the first few years.”
Lemieux: “It will be tough in the beginning, but I will control myself.”
The defense, the skating, the other negatives real and imagined do not puncture Johnston’s enthusiasm.
“The one thing you can teach in this game is defense,” he says. “You can’t teach offense. I’ve seen him in 2-1 games where he’s done his job. As for the skating, did you see him catch guys? He goes by some. Any time you’ve got a guy 6-foot-4, 6-foot-5 on skates, he doesn’t look fast. The little guys are going this way and that way. But he gets there.”
Claude Foumel knows. Fournel is the Laval owner and three seasons ago his team lived its life in last place, struggling, drawing crowds below 1,000. This year, in a playoff against Granby, Fournel and his wife, Suzanne, had to turn folks away from the Centre Sportif Laval for the first time.
“Mario’s not a fast skater, he’s a smart skater,” Foumel says. “But that’s what they say about Gretzky. He’s not a goal-scorer. That’s not his biggest asset. But yet he can score more goals than anybody else. That’s what everybody said about Gretzky. It’s unbelievable. He’s complete.
“If DeBartolo wants to know what Mario’s worth, you tell him to call me.”
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- Archive: 40 Years Ago, Penguins Brass Gushed Over Junior Hockey Phenom Mario Lemieux
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