When was mario lemieux drafted

Later, Lemieux helped get the team out of their financial mismanagement by buying the team, and multiple times saved the team from further relocation rumors. The Devils end up with the second pick and selected Kirk Muller , who would help begin to turn the franchise around. What would have happened if the Devils won the first overall pick and gotten Lemieux?

The Pens get Kirk Muller, who, with all due respect, has nowhere near the gravitas of Lemieux. The team continues to struggle mightily at the gate and on the ice. Without Lemieux, the people of Pittsburgh never have a star to root for.

With all the financial issues the Penguins would have, the team is finally sold to a group in Seattle to become the Metropolitans in time for the season. The team finds success there, with a budding rivalry with the Vancouver Canucks, and becomes a good, not great team for the next decade.

Years later, when the NHL looked at expansion, Pittsburgh applied for a team but was constantly overlooked by Gary Bettman in favor of the Sun Belt franchises. With worries of fan support and financial success, it would take years for the NHL to consider returning to Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, the Devils would draft Lemieux and start to hit it big in the season. Super Mario begins to lead the league in scoring, winning the first of his six Art Ross trophies, and the Devils would stun the Bruins in the Wales Conference Final to face the Oilers in the Stanley Cup Final, a series the Oilers would still win.

With Lemieux bringing the team out of the cellar, the Devils would never have drafted Brendan Shanahan , and that means Scott Stevens would remain with the St. Louis Blues for the majority of his legendary career.

Lemieux would help bring the Cup to New Jersey by , though, finishing through his first full season in three years, with the Devils defeating the defending champion Los Angeles Kings for the Cup, four games to two.

Scott Niedermayer and Martin Brodeur would join the team in the following years, creating one of the best, most well-balanced teams in the league. The infamous neutral zone trap would never have been put in place by Jacques Lemaire , who never ended up being hired in the first place. The momentum lost by the lockout is immediately brought back with the Devils at the forefront, now having the best forward, defenseman, and goalie in the league.

The Devils franchise would remain one of the premier teams in hockey, and they would wrestle away control of Northern New Jersey from Rangers fans, and the fan base would expand into South Jersey as well, bringing in a term of financial stability and on-ice success for years to come.

The Penguins without Lemieux would have been shipped out of town within a few years, and the Devils would have achieved even higher levels of success than what they already had during the late 90s to early s.

He never played an NHL game. G: Patrick Roy — One of the best ever behind the mask is far and away the best goalie drafted in He was drafted in the third round, 59th overall, and was the third goalie selected Craig Billington and Daryl Reaugh were taken before him.

D: Kevin Hatcher — A nice blend of size and skill, Hatcher played over 1, games and eclipsed the 30 goal mark, an impressive feat for a defenseman. C: Mario Lemieux — Sits 7th all time in scoring, with the second most career points per game as the Hall-of-Famer won 2 Stanley Cups and numerous other awards. RW: Brett Hull — Perhaps the purest goal scorer in hockey history.

He bulged the twine an incredible times in his career, en route to posting more goals than assists in his 20 seasons. Perhaps one of the greatest draft classes ever. More FS Atlantic News ». View all Atlantic Sites.

More Metropolitan News ». More FS Metropolitan News ». TSN even published a documentary about the entire saga in to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the whole thing. Head Coach Lou Angotti has gone on record and admitted that the team did, indeed, purposely lose games to draft Lemieux, though former GM Eddie Johnston has never made such a comment. Bonus factoids: the NHL Draft also saw the Penguins select Doug Bodger and Roger Belanger with picks 9 and 16 respectively, marking the only time in franchise history that Pittsburgh selected more than one player in the first round, according to PittsburghHockey.

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