PastorOfMuppets
Banned
You can add steroid era Bonds seasons to this mix and I believe Lemieux's 1992-1993 season still comes out on top. And to this day no one talks about it as one of the all time great seasons - even if you just limit it to hockey which is kind of amazing to me.
You hear about the Gretzky 215 point season, Steroid Bonds and his video game like stats, the OJ Simpson 2003 yards in 14 games, Dan Marino's 48 TD and 5084 yard season.
I'd like to make a case for Mario Lemieux:
I honestly believe that Mario Lemieux is the greatest athlete of the last 40 years and that argument can purely be made almost entirely on his 1992-93 season.
- He missed 24 games due to injury - that's slightly under 1/3rr of an NHL season, and won the scoring title. That's like winning the home run race in baseball while only playing 117 of 163 games.
- His team was out of the playoff race when he was injured. He came back and led them on a 17 game winning streak which is still the longest winning streak in NHL history. And keep in mind, this was when the NHL still had ties. In the post lockout NHL, games are either won or lost.
To top it off, the reason he missed 24 games was to get chemotherapy treatment for CANCER. The guy pulled off one of the best seasons in NHL history despite getting cancer in the middle of it and going through three months of radiation treatment. That's not like coming back from cancer after taking a year off and having a decent season, the guy literally came back from cancer the day after his last radiation treatment, scored a goal and got an assist and then went on to win the scoring race and lead his team to 17 straight victories.
People often like to throw out names like Donald Bradman or Wilt Chamberlain - super old school guys who played in a different era with rules so different it might as well have been another sport. My counter to those names would be to give them cancer in the middle of their best seasons and see how'd they fare after three months of chemo.
I think he doesn't get enough recognition outside of Pittsburgh because he played hockey and didn't put up the volume that his contemporaries did. But in my mind, based pure on the 92-93 season, there isn't a single athlete in the last 40 years that was as good at his sport as Lemieux was at hockey. Not Jordan, not Ali, not Bonds, not Barry Sanders. Nobody.
You hear about the Gretzky 215 point season, Steroid Bonds and his video game like stats, the OJ Simpson 2003 yards in 14 games, Dan Marino's 48 TD and 5084 yard season.
I'd like to make a case for Mario Lemieux:
I honestly believe that Mario Lemieux is the greatest athlete of the last 40 years and that argument can purely be made almost entirely on his 1992-93 season.
- He missed 24 games due to injury - that's slightly under 1/3rr of an NHL season, and won the scoring title. That's like winning the home run race in baseball while only playing 117 of 163 games.
- His team was out of the playoff race when he was injured. He came back and led them on a 17 game winning streak which is still the longest winning streak in NHL history. And keep in mind, this was when the NHL still had ties. In the post lockout NHL, games are either won or lost.
To top it off, the reason he missed 24 games was to get chemotherapy treatment for CANCER. The guy pulled off one of the best seasons in NHL history despite getting cancer in the middle of it and going through three months of radiation treatment. That's not like coming back from cancer after taking a year off and having a decent season, the guy literally came back from cancer the day after his last radiation treatment, scored a goal and got an assist and then went on to win the scoring race and lead his team to 17 straight victories.
People often like to throw out names like Donald Bradman or Wilt Chamberlain - super old school guys who played in a different era with rules so different it might as well have been another sport. My counter to those names would be to give them cancer in the middle of their best seasons and see how'd they fare after three months of chemo.
I think he doesn't get enough recognition outside of Pittsburgh because he played hockey and didn't put up the volume that his contemporaries did. But in my mind, based pure on the 92-93 season, there isn't a single athlete in the last 40 years that was as good at his sport as Lemieux was at hockey. Not Jordan, not Ali, not Bonds, not Barry Sanders. Nobody.
