Nicknames flew back and forth like pucks. “Yogs” had a laugh with one teammate, “Kovy” with another.
Some players, fresh from the shower, wore only towels. Some still sat in front of United Center cubicles in soaked undershirts, having sweated off some of Saturday night’s refreshments at Sunday morning’s skate.
None of the Penguins seemed in a hurry to leave “the room.” Hockey players would rather be in the dressing room than on the ice, golf course or barstool. This is where men are boys and boys are men. This is where you strengthen bonds you’d spill blood for.
No wives. No children. No problems.
“For a hockey player,” said former Blackhawk Marc Bergevin, “there’s no better place in the world than the dressing room. It’s like you’re still 10 years old. This, I think, was what he missed most.”
Bergevin, 35, was born three months before Mario Lemieux was born in Montreal. They played with and against each other through childhood. Soon after Lemieux’s hockey-rocking comeback, he ramrodded a trade for Bergevin, then picked him up at the airport.
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How many team owners would chauffeur an aging acquisition? Better question: How many are helping save their franchise and their sport by returning to play it?
What owner/savior Lemieux wants, he gets. He wanted old pals Bergevin and Kevin Stevens watching his back on the ice and sharing laughs in the room.
“When you’re gone that long,” Bergevin said of Lemieux’s 3 1/2-year retirement, “and it really makes you appreciate all the little things that make being part of this game so special. I missed a month [this season with a broken thumb], and it drove me crazy. I can only imagine what he went through.
“You can see how much fun he’s having just being around the guys again. He acts like just another player. You certainly wouldn’t know he’s the owner, and he doesn’t try to coach. The only difference for us is the media frenzy wherever we go. It’s like we’re the Rolling Stones of hockey.”
Lemieux sat in front of his cubicle trying to have fun with something he once treated like 15 minutes in the penalty box. With eight or 10 microphones close enough to bite, he answered the same questions he hears at every sold-out stop. He smiled occasionally. He even chuckled.
He hadn’t shaved for couple of days. He happily said he hadn’t been to the office for a couple of weeks. Heaven can wait.
Here’s wishing every pro athlete, in his or her spoiled-rotten prime, could sit out for at least a year and realize just how great he or she has it. “You can’t replace this life,” Bergevin said.
Too many hockey stars have gone into robot mode during dressing-room interviews. They don’t want teammates razzing them for being publicity hounds. Now owner Lemieux realizes these sessions are much more than a necessary evil. They’re a free-publicity privilege.
The only question about Lemieux is, What took him so long? His back is healed, his Hodgkin’s disease at bay, his investment in some trouble. His team desperately needs a new arena, his league an ESPN attraction.
Fans desperate for big-event hockey are paying scalper’s prices to see Lemieux as if he’s Elvis. It took reincarnated No. 66 to get a Blackhawks game on local TV. The media turnout for Pittsburgh 4, Chicago 0 was Jordanesque.
Yet as an on-ice entertainer or off-ice personality, Super Mario isn’t in Michael Jordan’s league.
Did Lemieux risk humiliation by coming back? Not with two of the game’s best players, Jaromir Jagr and Alexei Kovalev, taking some pressure off him. He’s a low-mileage 35, and much of the clutching and grabbing that helped drive him into retirement has been eliminated. He roamed free for an easy rebound goal against the Blackhawks.
So why wouldn’t he swoop down out of the owner’s booth into the headlines?
This recalls a conversation with Jordan the season after he retired. “Now that they don’t allow hand-checking,” he said, “I could be even more effective than I was last year.”
Jordan was a much more battered 35 when he quit. But he quit prematurely, out of prideful spite. Nothing he has done since has been able to replace competing for NBA titles and leading the NBA’s Rolling Stones on tour. Not golf, not general-managing, certainly not car-pooling.
But what Jordan has to miss most is the locker room. The 10-year-old in you starts to die when you leave it. Lemieux knows.