Appreciating Lemieux

Among the deluge of reaction to Mario Lemieux's retirement, there are two not uncommon threads being pulled. A couple of examples: "His body betrayed the talent that was given him", says the headline most succintly over Mark Spector's National Post column, and over at the Calgary Sun, Eric Francis notes that the Great One still trumps the Magnificent One.

CP PHOTO

And now a new era begins.

The other way of looking at this: yes, he missed 400 games due to injury, but the wonder is that he was able to last this long. The man's 40 years old and has played over a thousand NHL regular season and playoff games, along with Team Canada ('85 world championship, '87 Canada Cup, '02 Olympics, '04 World Cup), despite more tha his share of the usual knocks and pings, including a a couple of back surgeries, a hip ailment and a bout with cancer, which he managed to beat, thus becoming an inspiration to thousands.

As for comparing Gretzky's 1 to Lemieux's 1-A in your NHL superstars programme of the 1980s and '90s, Mario has had the much more uncommon career arc -- how many athletes of this era last as long in one place, much less a fellow who has overcome Hodgkin's lymphoma, kept an ailing franchise from foundering and eventually assuming the player/CEO dual portfolio, shepherding the anointed Sidney Crosby into the next era of a league that, for all its ups and downs, is a far more lucrative place for players than it was upon his arrival? (Lemieux's first NHL contract was $700,000 for two years, after some testy negotiations; More than two decades later, Lemieux's Pens signed Crosby to a rookie-scale deal that begins at $850,000 and rises with incentives to nearly $4 million.)

I remember taking the train to Montreal in 1984 to see Lemieux's Laval team play at the old Forum. He was in the final weeks of his junior career and there were loud whispers that he wasn't quite the force he was cracked up to be. But watching the long strides, the nonchalance and mostly the air of boredom he seemed to be playing with, it was clear that he had outgrown that stage, a man among boys.

That never changed. Lemieux had the rare package of size, grace and skill -- he made it look easy, as the cliche goes, which is perhaps why so much of the comment surrounding his retirement has this tinge of unfulfilled potential about it.  The truth for all athletes is that it's never easy, and for very few -- like Lemieux -- when you get to the end of the road and look back, it has the air of the impossible.

Comments

[Another Chris]

I think the most interesting aspect of Mario's comeback and subsequent second retirement is the positive image transformation that took place. When he retired the first time, I remember him as being a great hockey player, but also as someone who was distant and somewhat uninterested in the game of hockey. He was blessed with the most impressive physical tools to ever grace an NHL arena but he seemed to lack the passion that made players like Gretzky and Howe beloved in the eyes of the public.

When he came out of retirement and dominated the game after such a long layoff, you couldn't help but be impressed. He seemed to have a better understanding of the importance of hockey in the fabric of Canadian life. He showed passion, he showed determination, and he showed more character than I remember him showing in his first go around. His role in bringing the gold back to Canada only served to solidify his new image as the ultimate selfless hockey ambassador.

What's interesting about the whole thing is that while this image transformation was going on, the seemingly real reasons behind his comeback were completely selfish. He didn't purchase the Penguins out of a sense of devotion to Pittsburgh. He was basically handed the team in a bankruptcy settlement because he was their #1 creditor (remember that he retired in the middle of a lucrative multi-year deal). As the owner of the Pens, he suddenly had a financial interest in the success of the team, and he was in a position to influence the bottom line by adding the most dominating and marketable player around - himself. His comeabck was all about increasing the value of the Penguins so that he could ultimately sell the team and get as much money out of them as possible. With the news in the last couple of weeks about the team being for sale, it's no coincidence that his retirement announcement followed shortly after.

I doesn't change my new appreciation for him and his place is the history of the game, but it is an inetresting point that seems to be omitted from the retirement stories.

[cy]

Good points, AC, the economic self-interest angle is one I pretty much completely ignored, but it certainly fits here. What is intriguing about that, too, is what it suggests -- that only by coming back out of personal necessity (ie, to get back the money they owed him) could he rediscover a zeal for the game that up till then wasn't all that obvious to see. (I don't know if that's completely true though -- you don't play as long as he had, and as well as he had up to that point, and not have some appreciation for the game you play.) AS for being "distant and uninterested", I don't know about that either -- sometimes I find those labels are trotted out when someone doesn't play along with the media by being quotable, or accomodating. Lemieux, who played hockey with an uncommon grace that wa s in itself deceptive, was never really a jerk with the media -- but he certainly didn't go out of his way to make for good copy.

[Another Chris]

"Distant and uninterested" is only one man's opinion, but he certainly never captured the hearts and the imagination of the public the way that Gretzky did. Another reason for this could have been due to his sheer size. When he broke into the league, it was unprecedented for someone that size to have that skill. It was too easy for him and I don't think the public is ever eager to cheer on Goliath in a league full of Davids. I remember thinking that it was almost unfair that he had such strength and reach - how couldn't he dominate?. By the time he returned to the league after his retirement, the league was full of behemoths. It was no longer a man against boys and I think that also helped change some people's perception of him (myself included). He was now dominating bigger, younger, and faster guys and he was doing it not only with a broken-down body, but also with 4 years of rust.