NHL great Lemieux calls it a career

PITTSBURGH -- Penguins star and owner Mario Lemieux, one of hockey's greatest players, retired Tuesday for the second time.

Lemieux, a Hall of Famer who won Stanley Cups and scoring titles and then battled through cancer and heart problems in a comeback, announced his decision at a news conference.

"If I could still play this game I would be on the ice," Lemieux said.

The 40-year-old Lemieux learned in early December he has atrial fibrillation, an irregular heartbeat that can cause his pulse to flutter wildly and must be controlled by medication.

Lemieux, the NHL's seventh-leading career scorer with 1,723 points, tried to return a week after being hospitalized with the problem, but it flared up again during a Dec. 16 game against Buffalo and he has not played since.

Lemieux has been practicing the last several weeks with the intent on returning this season but, with the Penguins stuck in a 10-game losing streak and with no hope of them making the playoffs, decided to quit playing for a second time.

He also retired after the 1996-97 season following years of back problems and a 1993 cancer scare in which he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, but he returned midway through the 2000-01 season and has played since.

However, he has again fought through injuries -- including two major hip problems -- that caused him to miss most of the 2001-02 and 2003-04 seasons. He had seven goals and 15 assists in 26 games this season.

"I have two main reasons for retiring here today," Lemieux said. "The first one is I can no longer play at the level that I was accustomed to in the past and that has been, very, very frustrating to me throughout this past year. The second one is realizing that my health, along with my family is the most important thing in the world.

"I also realized that the new NHL is really for the young guys and I think we have a lot of them now in the league. Some young guys that are dominating -- we have a few here in Pittsburgh -- and I think these young guys are really the future of the NHL."

Lemieux, a first-ballot Hall of Fame inductee in 1997, led the Penguins -- the NHL's worst team before he was drafted in 1984 -- to successive Stanley Cup championships in 1991 and 1992. He won six NHL scoring titles, three MVP awards and two Conn Smythe awards as the Stanley Cup playoffs MVP.

Lemieux, who wore No. 66 throughout his career, scored 690 goals and had 1,033 assists in 915 career games. He also became the first major pro sports star to buy the team for which he played, assembling a group that bought the team in federal bankruptcy court in 1999.