Mario Lemieux needed 747 games in the National Hockey League to record 1,500 points. Jaromir Jagr needed 763 to reach 1,000.
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Jaromir Jagr is congratulated by Mario Lemieux after scoring a goal which gave him 1,000 career points.(Peter Diana, Post-Gazette) |
Those are two exceptional milestones, levels only a handful of players can even dream of reaching.
And for two players who have done so much together -- won championships, made magic and memories -- scrawling their names in the NHL record book on the same night seemed particularly appropriate.
"That was something special for both of us," Lemieux said. "Because we've played so many years together, and accomplished so much."
And they might accomplish a lot more before they go their separate ways again.
Certainly, their work in the Penguins' 5-3 victory against Ottawa at Mellon Arena -- Lemieux scored one goal and set up three, Jagr scored two and set up one -- did nothing to refute the idea.
The four points Lemieux earned against the Senators were a nice complement to the three he picked up Wednesday against Toronto -- anyone detect a trend here? -- and Jagr is on an equally torrid pace, having put up two goals and two assists against the Maple Leafs.
At this rate, Jagr should be back on top in the NHL scoring race before mid-January. And by Valentine's Day, the only guy with a chance to catch him will be Lemieux.
What should make the rest of the league break out in a cold sweat is that, from all indications, Lemieux and Jagr, along with linemate Jan Hrdina, should only get better in coming weeks, because they still aren't completely in sync.
"I think we can get better," Lemieux said. "I think we're still, at times, not sure, especially with [Hrdina]. I'm still not sure what he's going to do. The more we play together, the more we practice ... I think we can be a lot better.
"And the more conditioning I can get in the next couple of weeks, to take my game to the next level, I think it will help the line a little more."
The Penguins have won three games in a row -- they hadn't done that since Nov. 8-11 -- and raised their record to 17-14-6-1.
"It's very important that the team's playing very well, and that we're winning games," Jagr said.
Jagr rang up point No. 1,000 at 5:55 of the second period, when he swiped a Lemieux rebound between the legs of Ottawa goalie Jani Hurme from the front lip of the crease to tie the score, 3-3. Only 11 players in league history -- Lemieux is one of them -- reached four figures faster than Jagr.
"I wanted to make sure I didn't get [to] 1,000 in the last game," Jagr said, smiling. "That would have meant nothing. This is a lot better."
Jagr got an extended ovation from the standing-room crowd of 17,148 -- that's 190 above capacity -- during the next stoppage in play, and Lemieux received one at 1:28 of the third, after he fed Jagr for what proved to be the winner.
That assist, Lemieux's fifth in two games, made him the 10th player in league history to get 1,500.
The Penguins' lineup was bolstered last night by the return of left winger Rene Corbet, who had missed three games because of a sore back.
Winger Matthew Barnaby was back in the lineup, too -- he completed a four-game, league-imposed suspension Wednesday -- but he never got off the bench. That didn't go unnoticed by the crowd, which began to chant for him with about five minutes left in regulation.
Ottawa was playing its third game in four nights, so the Senators figured to be at least a little tired, but that wasn't evident in the early minutes of play.
They got the first five shots of the game, the second of which ended up behind Penguins goalie Garth Snow. Petr Schastlivy got the goal 96 seconds after the opening faceoff, when he nudged a backhander past Snow from the left side of the crease.
Lemieux lost an apparent goal at 5:36, one second after a Penguins power play expired.
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Mario Lemieux argues with referee Don Van Massenhoven, whose quick whistle nullified a goal by Lemieux in the first period last night. Lemieux still racked up four points in the Penguins’ 5-3 victory. (Peter Diana, Post-Gazette) |
Lemieux hammered a shot at the Ottawa net from a near-impossible angle in the left-winger corner, and after hitting Hurme, who was hugging the post, it dropped over the goal line.
Referee Don Van Massenhoven, however, blew the play dead when he lost sight of the puck. Which is to say, a millisecond or so before it fell behind Hurme.
Penguins Coach Ivan Hlinka was livid about the call, and the crowd had a predictably hostile reaction to it, but it was not subject to video review.
There was no controversy at 10:15, however, when Robert Lang punched a Martin Straka rebound between Hurme's legs for a power-play goal for his 13th of the season. Lemieux, who gave the puck to Straka, received the second assist.
Ottawa countered quickly, as Alexei Yashin's shot from above the left dot hit Snow on its way to the net at 12:28, but an inspired effort by Straka in the waning seconds of the period allowed the Penguins to go into the intermission tied.
Straka charged between the Ottawa defensemen and got off a shot that eluded Hurme before caroming off the left post.
The Senators' reprieve was temporary, though, because when defenseman Wade Redden swept the puck away from the goal line, he put it directly onto the stick of Penguins defenseman Janne Laukkanen, who threw it by Hurme with 5.8 seconds to play for his first of the season.
Ottawa claimed its third lead of the evening during a power play at 3:49 of the second, when Martin Havlat blew a shot past Snow from near the top of the right circle, but the Penguins' bounced back again on Jagr's goal at 5:55.
Lemieux then set up Jagr for the go-ahead goal at 1:28 of the third, and Snow, who finished with 28 saves on 31 shots, preserved the lead with just more than three minutes to play, when he turned aside Senators forward Daniel Alfredsson, who broke in alone down the slot.
"I was pretty excited," Snow said. "You get fired up. You don't feel timid at all. I thought I'd stop him."
Lemieux closed out the scoring with an empty-net goal 12.5 seconds before time expired, and the confidence that has permeated this team since Lemieux's comeback began was raised another notch.
Ottawa plays a defense-oriented game and can frustrate opponents, but the Penguins never got flustered despite falling behind three times.
"That's a sign of a pretty good team, to be able to relax and not panic," Lemieux said. "That's what we have to do to get to the next level.
"I think everybody's starting to realize that, that even though we're down by one or two goals, we have a lot of people who can score. Tonight was a good sign that we're starting to get to the next level."
And they should have a pretty good idea about which two guys can lead them there.
Lemieux, Jagr reach milestones in 5-3 victory against Senators 
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