Former Penguins superstar Mario Lemiex had different health issues over the course of his career. And in this THN archive story, Lemieux's back issues were under the spotlight.

Pittsburgh Penguins icon Mario Lemieux had health issues over the course of his Hockey Hall of Fame careeer, And in this story from THN's Oct. 12, 1990 edition, writer Dave Molinari chronicled Lemieux's back issues that knocked him out of their lineup.

TWO STEPS BACK

By Dave Molinari

Mario Lemieux has earned two Art Ross trophies as league scoring champ. He won the 1988 Hart Trophy as the NHL’s Most Valuable Player. He piles up points like no one in league history has except Wayne Gretzky.

His awards and achievements are impressive, to be sure, but measuring Lemieux’s value to the Pittsburgh Penguins is not strictly a paint-by-numbers proposition.

He has been the foundation of their franchise since 1984, the player counted on to give this team with such a miserable past a fighting chance in the present and some hope for the future.

Lemieux has surpassed all expectations since he entered the league six autumns ago, routinely playing the game at a ratified height. But it turns out he does have some limitations.

Even Lemieux can’t carry a hockey team on a faulty back. He tried last season, but had to sit out 21 of the final 22 games when the pain from a herniated disc became too excruciating.

In his absence, the Penguins went 5-12-4 and skidded into fifth place in the Patrick Division and out of the playoffs.

Lemieux underwent back surgery in July and appeared to be recovering quickly enough to rejoin the Penguins for the start of the 1990-91 regular season, but his comeback was aborted by a back infection discovered in late September. This time, Pittsburgh likely will have to get by without him for about three months.

The magnitude of Lemieux’s absence won’t be clear until the Penguins have been without him for a while, but even new coach Bob Johnson realizes it will be a high-impact loss. You can’t have a potential 200-point scorer wrenched from your lineup without suffering some withdrawal symptoms.

“With Mario in the lineup, (when) it’s 2-2 in the third period, the longer you play, the better the chance you have of winning, because you’ve got the best player in the game,” Johnson said.

“Now when it’s 2-2, we’ve got to win by playing better hockey than the other team.”

Still, the Penguins believe they have found a guy who can help them compensate somewhat for Lemieux’s absence. He’s an unlikely savior—a 59-year-old who never played in the NHL—but the early indications are that their faith in him is well-founded.

True, they’re not counting on Bob Johnson to produce even a single goal or assist, but the Penguins are convinced he will make a monumental difference in their performance this season.

Johnson introduced Pittsburgh to some radical concepts during the pre-season, especially pertaining to defense. He has the novel idea the team should play some.

Not a bad thought, since Pittsburgh’s goals-against average of 4.44 tied for the second-worst in the league last season. Johnson’s approach seemed to work during the pre-season, when the Penguins cut that figure to 2.00 while going 7-2-0.

Losing the 30 or so goals Lemieux likely would have scored by Christmas won’t hurt nearly as much if Pittsburgh can deflate its chronically bloated goals-against total.

“With or without Mario, we definitely had to improve in that area (defense),” defenseman Paul Coffey said.

“We just have to keep improving and get everyone to believe that defense wins games,” Johnson said.

Pittsburgh’s—and maybe hockey’s—biggest weapon will be bolstered for at least the next few months, but the Penguins aren’t concerned they’ll need divine intervention to avoid being shut out every night. Not with guys like Coffey, Joe Mullen, Tony Tanti, John Cullen, Mark Recchi, Kevin Stevens and Rob Brown on the payroll.

“Even when Mario went down last year, we didn’t have a problem scoring goals,” center Barry Pederson said.

“If there is a drop offensively, I think the strides we’re going to make on special teams and 5-on-5 are going to more than make up the difference.”

When the Penguins acquired Mullen from Calgary in June, New York Rangers’ assistant coach Wayne Cashman suggested Pittsburgh’s power play might produce 200 goals this season. He was joking. Probably.

But if Lemieux were around for a full season, the NHL record of 119 power-play goals, set by the Penguins a few years ago, likely would be in mortal peril, maybe by February. Even without him, Pittsburgh’s power play is shaping up as a strike force with few equals.

“The power play now is even more important,” Tanti said. “When Mario was out there, he sort of took control and set up all the plays. Now, we’re going to need two or three units who are going to play well and score.”

The Penguins had that during the pre-season, converting on more than 34 per cent of their opportunities. All with Lemieux contributing nothing more than moral support.

For all the optimism spawned by the Penguins’ strong pre-season performance, Lemieux’s absence creates some serious questions. Such as, are the other centers capable of putting the extra ice time they’ll be getting to productive use?

Lemieux generally is good for 30-plus minutes per game, and most of that time figures to be split between Cullen, Pederson and Bryan Trottier. Of those, only Cullen contributed on a regular basis last season, when he had 92 points.

“Last year, I think I showed a lot of people what I can do,” Cullen said.

True, but he still has to prove he can put together strong years back-to-back, and do it while trying to ignore an on-going contract dispute.

Pederson and Trottier have even greater challenges. For Pederson, it’s proving his woeful play after the Penguins acquired him from Vancouver last season was an aberration.

“I’m looking forward to improving, vastly, on the way I played last year,” he said. “I feel I’m in much better shape and that I’m ready to go. I definitely want to do more than I did last year.”

Trottier, meanwhile, has the motivation of showing the New York Islanders erred by buying out his contract during the off-season, of not allowing him to complete his Hall-of-Fame career on Long Island.

Penguins’ general manager Craig Patrick faced some serious second-guessing when he spent a reported $400,000 to sign Trottier this summer, but that expense began to look like a shrewd investment when Lemieux’s latest back condition was diagnosed.

“We just found that last year, we could have used another centerman,” Patrick said. “We had hoped Mario was going to be healthy, but now we’re facing a situation where he’s not going to be for a while, so I’m glad we have Bryan. He’s shown already that he’s going to step in and do a good job.”

Even in his prime, Trottier was not Lemieux’s equal as an offensive player. It’s unrealistic to expect him—or him and Pederson and Cullen—to make up for the points Lemieux would have gotten.

Still, the Penguins weren’t working on any concession speeches as the regular season approached. Of course, there wasn’t much talk about contending for the Patrick Division championship, either.

The Penguins’ plan is to simply stay afloat until Lemieux gets back, hang around. 500, and hope he can fuel a surge toward the top of the division sometime in 1991.

“I’d rather have him for the second half of the season than the first,” Coffey said.

“We’ll try to get a good start, then if things start to slide, we’ll have a big bonus coming,” Johnson said. “Sometime, we’re going to get the best player in the league back.”

If getting Lemieux back is such a bonus, you know losing him was a serious blow. But it is the nature of pro sports that any setback, no matter how devastating, must be downplayed by those involved. Nobody in Pittsburgh went so far as to ask, “Mario Who?”, but Lemieux’s teammates weren’t ready to write off the season before it began.

“He’s such a big part of this team, but we’re going to get by,” defenseman Jim Johnson said. “We’re going to have to.”