Mario has played with the Pittsburgh Penguins ever since he was drafted by them in 1984. He came to Pittsburgh as the Number One Pick in that years entry draft. At the time Pittsburgh was the worst team in the league and was struggling terribly. In seven short years Mario turned that team around and the Penguins won the first of two consecutive Stanley Cups in the spring of 1991.

Mario has also actively played in international competitions, representing Canada. He scored his famous 1987 goal which won Canada the Canada Cup, and Captained Team Canada to a gold medal at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.

About Mario

The inspirational story of Mario Lemieux is not one that will be forgotten anytime soon. Mario's play on the ice laeves crowds in awe and his life story just made it that much more amazing. Mario is by far the best player who ever laced up the skates in the NHL. What makes him the greatest is, unlike other great players, Mario has both size and finesse. His speed, stickhandling, and size give him the ideal body for a hockey player. He can outskate opponents with his speed, deke them with his stickhandling, and check them with his size. He's had a hockey career that others can only dream of, but not everything in life has been easy for Mario. His health problems have kept him from being able to play even one full season in the NHL, and yet still he has the highest points-per-game average in NHL history at 2.005, beating Gretzky's 1.94. One can only imagine the possibilities of what Mario is capable of if he were at perfect health. At thirty percent health he is still much better than all of the players around him, at a hundred percent Mario could have broken every single Gretzky record two times over.

Not only is Mario an amazing hockey player, he's a great person as well. He is a soft spoken, shy but humble man. When he arrived in Pittsburgh, the media felt he was snobby, but Mario was simply the shy kind of guy, as all of his teammates would agree that he doesn't say much in the dressing room, but when he does say something, it's important and everyone listens. Mario leads by example, not only on the ice but also in overcoming some of life's greatest challenges. On January 12, 1993 Mario announced that he had a form of Hodgkins disease, which lead to him having to miss two months of the regular season due to radiation treatments. Right after his last radiation treatment, he took a charter flight down to Phillidelphia to join his teammates for the game. Captain Couragous was back and scored a goal and an assist on that historic evening. Not only did he overcome cancer, he came back and won the Art Ross Trophy for the league's scoring leader that year. On the outside no one would ever know anything was wrong with Mario. That's one thing about him that all of his trainers and coaches have noticed, he never complains about any pain, ever. Things came to a point where his back got so bad that he couldn't even bend down to tie his hockey skates, so before each game one of the trainers would come into the dressing room and tie Mario's skates. Mario would then go on the ice and score 2,3 perhaps 4 points each night. Mario has proved over and over again in his career and life that pain is not a factor. These are just a few of the many reasons that make him one of hockey's greatest players of all-time.