This Day in Hockey History – February 23, 1996 – Lemieux and Jagr Go 50-50

Feb 23, 2019

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Two of the top 100 NHL players spent seven seasons as teammates with the Pittsburgh Penguins. Mario Lemieux, No. 66, was drafted first overall in 1984. After scoring more than 50 goals during his third season, Lemieux had his highest scoring seasons with 70 goals in 1987-88 and 85 in 1988-89. Then, in 1990, Jaromir Jagr, No. 68, was drafted fifth overall. Together, they proceeded to win back-to-back Stanley Cup championships in 1991 and 1992. Lemieux won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP both years, and he also picked up his third Art Ross Trophy as top points scorer in 1992. After sitting out the 1994-95 season, Lemieux was at peak performance, matching his scoring accomplishments from the 1992-93 season. This time, Jagr followed closely.

On February 23, 1996, Lemieux played in his 50th of the Penguins’ 59 games played so far that season. A crowd of 17,235 filled the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh to watch the Penguins play the Hartford Whalers. Both Lemieux and Jagr scored twice, and three of them were power-play goals. What’s more, these were the 49th and 50th goals of the season for each player.

Mario Lemieux, Tony McCune [CC BY 2.0],
via Wikimedia Commons

At 7:49 of the first period, Lemieux flipped a “Ron Francis rebound past Whalers goalie Sean Burke while straddling the goal line to the right of the net.” Before the period ended, Brendan Shanahan had scored twice for the Whalers. Less than a minute into the second period, Lemieux set up Markus Naslund to tie up the score. During a power play at 6:22, Jagr “created one lead – and wiped out another – by backhanding a Sergei Zubov rebound past Burke.” Shanahan did not let that lead continue past 14:12, when he completed his seventh hat trick (and first with Hartford). He later set up the fourth and final goal for the Whalers.

With the teammates both having scored 49 goals for the season, Lemieux said to Jagr, “Hey, kid, let’s bet who’s going to be first to get to 50.” Jagr confessed, “We had a little bet about champagne.” In the third period, as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported, “Lemieux nosed out Jagr for the honor of being the first player in the league to get his 50th by a total of three minutes, 46 seconds.” Lemieux’s 50th came during a power play at 5:37, “when he lashed a slap shot by Burke from the top of the left circle.” It was his fifth time scoring at least 50 goals in a season and the third time he’d needed 50 games or less to score that many. The goal was also Lemieux’s 544th overall, which tied him with Maurice Richard as 12th-highest in NHL scoring. At 9:23, during another power play, Jagr won the game with his 50th goal. He was the first Czech player in the NHL to score that many in one season. He commented, “I wanted to get to 50, especially at home. It’s a nice feeling.” This was the second time that teammates had reached 50 together. Lemieux had also done so with Kevin Stevens back on March 21, 1993. After the 1996 game, Lemieux said, “It was nice to do it on the same night. It’s a special night.”

Coach Ed Johnston told the press, “I’m very fortunate. Anytime you have the two best players in the game sitting on the same bench, that’s pretty good.” He continued, “I don’t think there’s anybody who could ever touch these two guys. They’re pretty amazing.” He was probably right, because in 11 other NHL teams, the top two scorers combined did not even equal 50 goals.

Jaromir Jagr

For that season and the next, Lemieux earned the Art Ross Trophy as top scorer (with 69 and 50 goals, respectively). Then Jagr came up and earned the same for the following four seasons. However, he did not top 50 goals again until that final season, 2000-01, when he scored 52. The two remained teammates until Lemieux’s first retirement in 1997 and for the first year of his return in 2000-01. Throughout that time, the Penguins always made the playoffs. Jagr was then traded to the Washington Capitals, and the Penguins did not return to the playoffs until 2007, the season after Lemieux retired for good.