It’s easy for fans of the Pittsburgh Penguins to take the talent they’ve had the privilege of watching over the years for granted. It has become somewhat expected by the team’s faithful that they possess a world-class talent such as Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, Sidney Crosby, or Evgeni Malkin.
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However, the truth is most organizations will never have a player of that caliber. The Pittsburgh Penguins were an irrelevant franchise leading up to 1984. In the season prior, they did just as Buffalo and others did last season and successfully tanked in order to land the best player to enter the NHL since Wayne Gretzky, and that was Lemieux. Of course, Mario would go on to be arguably the best player in the history of the game. But, what he did on New Years Eve of 1988 is something that had never been done, hasn’t been since and likely never will be again.
The Pens were facing the New Jersey Devils in front of a nearly maxed out Civic Arena crowd of 16,025 (seating capacity was 16,168 in 1988). Little did they know when they purchased their tickets, they were about to witness a spectacular show and NHL history in what turned out to be an 8-6 Penguin victory.
Lemieux opened the scoring a little less than five minutes into the first by scoring an even-strength goal. A mere three minutes later he scored a beauty, or in other words a classic Lemieux goal while shorthanded. There wasn’t much surprise in the building as it was obviously a pretty normal thing to watch Mario dominate on a regular basis. It was when Lemieux scored again, completing a first period hat trick a little less than four minutes later on the power play that everyone started pondering what was happening in front of them.
A little over eleven minutes into the second period Lemieux was given a penalty shot. When Mario was given free rein in that format it was all but guaranteed to be a goal and he finished it as many thought he would. I case you lost count, Le Magnifique has now tallied four goals. Those goals occurred at even-strength, short-handed, on the power play and then on a penalty shot. So, what’s left?
As the clock dwindled to one second remaining in the game, Lemieux received the puck skating across the blue line and buried the empty-netter. The arena erupted and even at that point I’m not sure that everyone there understood what they had just witnessed.
We’ll likely never see another night like this in hockey. And, we surely won’t see another talent like Mario in our lifetimes. But, at least we can go back in time and marvel at the excellence of what he provided the sport and the city of Pittsburgh.
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