New Jersey Devils alternate history: What if they drafted Mario Lemieux?

We all know Mario Lemieux saved the Penguins franchise on more than one occasion, bringing them two Cups along the way. But what if he got drafted by the New Jersey Devils instead?

Back in the 1983-84 season, there was no draft lottery, meaning the worst team in the NHL got the first overall pick, no question asked. Two teams were tanking for top prospect Mario Lemieux, who had an eye-popping 133 goals and 149 assists for 282 points in just 70 games for the Laval Voisins of the QMJHL. Those teams? The Pittsburgh Penguins and New Jersey Devils.

Both teams were bottoming out. Motivated by the hope of landing the first overall pick and Lemieux’s talent, the greatest tank war in NHL history began. The difference was the methods of sliding. The Penguins were benching healthy players, sending their better players to the minors, and were actively trying to lose games. Meanwhile, the Devils, in just their second year of existence, were just plain bad.

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The teams met for the final time on March 6, 1984 in New Jersey. The Devils’ Bob Hoffmeyer broke a 3-3 tie early in the third, followed by the dagger by Gary McAdam at the 10-minute mark, leading to an eventual 6-5 Devils win in regulation.

Had the Penguins won this game, the Penguins would end the season with 40 points, the Devils with 39, instead of the Devils 41 and the Penguins 38. Thus, the Penguins ended up “winning” the battle of the Sherman’s, and won the first overall pick in 1984 to select Lemieux.

The Penguins started to see success in 1989-90, once they started building the team around Lemieux. After picking up players like Jaromir Jagr, Ron Francis, Paul Coffey, Tom Barrasso, and Zarley Zalapski, the Penguins won the Stanley Cup in 1991 and 1992. Later, Lemieux helped get the team out of their financial mismanagement by buying the team, and multiple times saved the team from further relocation rumors.

The Devils end up with the second pick and selected Kirk Muller, who would help begin to turn the franchise around. Ken Daneyko, John MacLean, Aaron Broten, Pat Verbeek, and Muller all helped get the Devils to their first-ever playoffs in 1988.

With a trade of Muller to the Canadiens for Randy McKay and Stephane Richer, the seeds for Devils’ championships were planted, and the team would go on to win their first Cup in 1995.

But what would happen if the Penguins’ tank effort wasn’t so successful? What would have happened if the Devils won the first overall pick and gotten Lemieux?

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Alternate History

First, let’s look at the Penguins. The Pens get Kirk Muller, who, with all due respect, has nowhere near the gravitas of Lemieux. The team continues to struggle mightily at the gate and on the ice. Without Lemieux, the people of Pittsburgh never have a star to root for.

With all the financial issues the Penguins would have, the team is finally sold to a group in Seattle to become the Metropolitans in time for the 1986-87 season. The team finds success there, with a budding rivalry with the Vancouver Canucks, and becomes a good, not great team for the next decade.

Years later, when the NHL looked at expansion, Pittsburgh applied for a team but was constantly overlooked by Gary Bettman in favor of the Sun Belt franchises. With worries of fan support and financial success, it would take years for the NHL to consider returning to Pittsburgh.

Sidney Crosby would be drafted by the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, who would end up staying owned by Disney, and would become a powerhouse by the end of the 2000s, and that means Brian Burke would never have given us the golden soundbite, “Pittsburgh model my [butt], they won a [gosh darn] lottery”. The NHL’s expansion to 32 teams would end up happening in 2017, with Vegas introduced and the Pittsburgh Penguins finally making a comeback.

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Devils

Meanwhile, the Devils would draft Lemieux and start to hit it big in the 1987-88 season. Super Mario begins to lead the league in scoring, winning the first of his six Art Ross trophies, and the Devils would stun the Bruins in the Wales Conference Final to face the Oilers in the Stanley Cup Final, a series the Oilers would still win.

With Lemieux bringing the team out of the cellar, the Devils would never have drafted Brendan Shanahan, and that means Scott Stevens would remain with the St. Louis Blues for the majority of his legendary career.

Lemieux would help bring the Cup to New Jersey by 1991-92, though, finishing through his first full season in three years, with the Devils defeating the defending champion Los Angeles Kings for the Cup, four games to two. Scott Niedermayer and Martin Brodeur would join the team in the following years, creating one of the best, most well-balanced teams in the league.

The infamous neutral zone trap would never have been put in place by Jacques Lemaire, who never ended up being hired in the first place. More importantly, the NHL’s clutch-and-grab game would never really take hold (pun not intended). The momentum lost by the 1994 lockout is immediately brought back with the Devils at the forefront, now having the best forward, defenseman, and goalie in the league.

However, with Mario leaving hockey for a few years for his battle with lymphoma, the Devils would sink into the middle of the pack in the late 90’s, only to return to the top when Lemieux made his triumphant return in 2001, beating the Colorado Avalanche and Ray Bourque in a battle of tear-jerker stories.

The Devils franchise would remain one of the premier teams in hockey, and they would wrestle away control of Northern New Jersey from Rangers fans, and the fan base would expand into South Jersey as well, bringing in a term of financial stability and on-ice success for years to come.

Let’s put a bow on this thing. The Penguins without Lemieux would have been shipped out of town within a few years, and the Devils would have achieved even higher levels of success than what they already had during the late 90s to early 2000s.

For Penguins fans, this is what the darkest timeline looked like in the spring of 1984. But for Devils fans, this is simply impossible to grasp. The Devils without the trap? No Scott Stevens? Territorial advantage for fans? Inconceivable. All this because the Penguins didn’t tank hard enough.

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Is this actually what would have happened had the Penguins won that game back in March of 1984? Impossible to say. But that’s what we’re here to do, speculate what could have been. Mario in Devils red and green. No dead puck era filled with trap hockey. Sidney Crosby in Ducks’ eggplant and jade. No Pittsburgh Penguins at all post-1987. Impossible to imagine now, but it easily could have been.

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