I said it before, but Mario was my personal favorite player of this modern era. I saw him play live twice. Once in Ottawa against the Sens before his first retirement when him and Jagr decided to turn on the jets for about 8 minutes to cream the then pre-playoff era Sens. Before the game Lemieux skated around the rink by himself with a puck playing it off the boards back to himself. He was finding the spots.

The time before was in 87 when Canada played a Canada Cup pre-tourney warm-up against the US in Halifax. Canada won something like 11-3 and Lemieux scored the greatest goal I have ever seen which I would call a flip-pass-to-himself-with-back-to-net-from-left-circle. You know, one of those.

Bad back, cancer, a team so weak he had to buy it with back wages owed and now an irregular heartbeat. God love him.