Mario Lemieux was ranked the greatest player in major junior hockey history as the Canadian Hockey League unveiled its all-time Top 50 list Thursday.<\/p>\n
The former Laval Voisins star finished ahead of another Pittsburgh Penguins great in Sidney Crosby (Rimouski Oc\u00e9anic), followed by Wayne Gretzky (Peterborough Petes\/Soo Greyhounds), Connor McDavid (Erie Otters) and Mike Bossy (Laval National).<\/p>\n
The CHL said the rankings were determined through a combination of media and fan voting as part of the league\u2019s 50th anniversary celebrations.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m honoured to be chosen among this group of great players. My time at Laval and in the QMJHL played a big role in preparing me for an NHL career,\u201d \u00a0Lemieux said in a statement. \u201cWe all appreciate what the CHL has meant to Canadian hockey and the development of our players through the years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lemieux set CHL single-season records with 133 goals and 282 points in 1983-84 while recording a 61-game point streak with Laval.<\/p>\n
The Montreal native helped Laval win the 1984 QMJHL championship and recorded 52 points in 14 playoff games that season.<\/p>\n
\u201cMario Lemieux\u2019s dominance with the Laval Voisins remains one of the defining achievements in CHL history,\u201d said CHL president Dan MacKenzie.<\/p>\n
Lemieux later won two Stanley Cups with the Pittsburgh Penguins and retired with 1,723 points in 915 NHL regular-season games.<\/p>\n
Lemieux was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1997 after retiring and having the mandatory three-year waiting period waived. He returned to the NHL in 2000, played five more seasons with the Penguins and captained Canada to Olympic gold in 2002.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mario Lemieux was ranked the greatest player in major junior hockey history as the Canadian Hockey League unveiled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-671062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}