No More Mr. Ice Guy : Pittsburgh’s Mario Lemieux Starts to Shed His Reserved Nature

He blazed across the NHL landscape in a blur of impossibly long arms and gangly legs, setting up plays with pinpoint passes and scoring goals with an unparalleled blend of finesse and strength.

Mario Lemieux has dazzled fans since he joined the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1984, winning five NHL scoring titles, two Stanley Cups, three most-valuable-player awards and a battle with Hodgkin’s disease. Yet, unlike Wayne Gretzky, the other premier player of his generation, Lemieux has never won the fans’ hearts.

He earned their admiration, unquestionably, because he could perform feats with the puck almost too incredible to be believed and too quickly to be seen.

“I remember one time being caught in the Forum, standing still, with him coming at me at full speed at the blue line,” said King Coach Larry Robinson, who ranks among the best defensemen to play the game. “I was thinking, ‘What do I do? Do I charge him? Do I wait for him to make a move?’ I took a lunge at him and I ended up standing there while he went around me. . . .

“He’s the complete package. People say Wayne is better than he is, but because of his size [6 feet 4 and 225 pounds] and strength, he’s pretty hard to contain. He can carry two guys on his back and still score, and I don’t know that Wayne could carry two guys on his back and make plays.”

He also won the fans’ renewed respect with his spectacular return last season. Scoring 161 points in 70 games, after taking a year off to recover from his radiation treatments, transcends even the most fervent team loyalties.

“This is not an easy sport,” said King left wing Kevin Stevens, Lemieux’s linemate for three seasons in Pittsburgh. “It’s not like he has to go to an office and work telephones. He came back and played a high-intensity game.”

Despite all that, despite the prowess that has lifted him to eighth on the NHL’s goal-scoring list with 575, he never won fans’ affection. He was too aloof to inspire warmth, too removed, revealing little about himself and shunning the role of hockey ambassador that Gretzky has so deftly filled.

“He’s a private person, low-key, very quiet,” Penguin Coach Ed Johnston said. “It’s tough to get to know him. There are a few guys close to him, but he’s a real quiet family guy. . . . We’ve had a pretty good rapport. I know his personality. The key is to know when to back off. He wants his space sometimes.”

Only now, as Lemieux skates through what he has said will probably be his final season, has he relaxed his guard. Lemieux now takes time to share thoughts he once would have kept to himself, and to appreciate even the most mundane surroundings, such as the chilly practice rink where the Penguins skated Monday in preparation for their game against the Kings tonight at the Forum.

He was smiling, even playful. His energy and enthusiasm were apparent. His mood is good, his health is good--he has missed only one game this season--and the Penguins, after a miserable start and a series of unsettling trades, are riding a 5-0-2 surge. His fierce competitiveness has returned, and so has the jump that was missing from his legs as recently as a month ago.

“The only reason guys over 30, 35 years old come back and play is to win the Stanley Cup. That was my only reason,” he said. “When you lose, it’s not much fun. When you win, you start to get that feeling back and that’s what has happened the last seven, eight games. The team is playing much better. The trades that we made improved the team a lot. We have three solid lines now we can put out there and our defense is solid.”

He said his new outlook isn’t fueled by nostalgia over the impending end of his career, but such thoughts have entered his mind.

“Certainly you try to enjoy every trip,” he said. “You take a step back and look at things.”

Lemieux’s appearance tonight will be his first against the Kings here since Nov. 6, 1993, and quite likely his last.

“I used to like coming here when I played here,” he said. “It’s a nice building for the players.”

Although he used the past tense, he insisted he hasn’t decided to quit. But at 31, with his contract guaranteed whether he plays or not, and clutch-and-grab tactics back in vogue, the reasons to retire are outnumbering the reasons to stay.

He emphasized the word “probably” when asked if this season is his last, but when asked if anything could persuade him to play another season, he was more definite. “Not really,” he said.

Not the chance to win the NHL scoring title?

“I did that many times,” said Lemieux, three points away from the NHL scoring lead with 12 goals and 36 points in 26 games.

That’s well off the 71 points he had after 26 games last season, but still a 112-point pace, potentially enough to win again.

“I won a couple of championships and scoring titles and a couple of awards, but there comes a point in time where you want to do something else in your life,” he said. “I have three kids and I want to spend more time with them. My family is always going to be No. 1. When I make my decision at the end of the year, that’s going to be part of it.”

His family supported him through his worst hours, which began on the January day in 1993 when he learned that the lump on his neck was Hodgkin’s. He cried for 30 minutes, unable to answer his wife’s pleas to tell her what was wrong.

After that, however, he never cried another tear. Instead, he poured his energy into withstanding the five-times-a-week radiation treatments and maintaining his strength.

He never revealed that the nausea was often debilitating, that his hair fell out in clumps and that he also had intense back pain from an unrelated injury that later required surgery. With little apparent effort, he passed Buffalo’s Pat LaFontaine and won the scoring title with 160 points, even though he played only 60 games.

“I remember the day of his last chemo treatment, he went to Philly, he got there about 4 o’clock, and he went out there and played,” Stevens said. “I think he gets overlooked for what he’s overcome. It’s ridiculous. Everybody talks about Michael Jordan coming back from baseball, but Mario came back from cancer. I don’t think he gets enough credit.”

The records he could set if he had a sturdy back--or if the anemia and weakness from the Hodgkin’s treatments hadn’t robbed him of the 1994-95 season--are staggering to contemplate. But Lemieux chooses to think of what he may still achieve, rather than what he has lost.

“Sometimes it’s difficult to accept, that you have so much to offer and it’s taken away from you in a sense,” he said. “It’s frustrating but you go on.

“It would have been a little bit different [if he had been healthy and injury-free]. But everything in life happens for a reason. I guess that’s just the way my life went for a few years. You just have to face it and put everything behind you.”

He will probably never shake the fear of a recurrence of his illness, although the longer he is cancer-free, the better his odds of remaining that way the rest of his life. He has checkups every six months--the most recent was in September--and he has passed with high marks.

“Of course he’s conscious of that. It’s there for all time,” said his agent, Tom Reich. “He’s in generally good health and his state of mind is very good. . . . He’s no longer the young highlight film. He’s a veteran leader and a player for the ages and he’s not trying to be a politician. He’s very comfortable with himself and I’d characterize that as quiet and dignified.”

He’s not sure what he will do when he retires, whenever that may be. Golf will take up much of his time, but the hands that made 50-goal scorers of Rob Brown and Warren Young--who afterward returned to their previous obscurity--will also be diapering his infant son, Austin, who was born three months prematurely last spring but is thriving now.

For now, though, Lemieux is not looking past this season and getting another shot at the precious Cup.

“I’ll probably play all four games on this trip, and after Christmas we’ll see what’s happening,” he said of a swing that includes the Mighty Ducks on Wednesday night. “It’s a matter of getting the team back over .500. We’re fighting for a playoff spot and it would be tough to miss some games now. I think we’re going in the right direction.”