Mario Lemieux tops CHL’s Top 50 list as junior hockey’s most dominant force

Photo by Canadian Hockey League (CHL) / Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League



CALGARY — Mario Lemieux has officially been named the greatest player in Canadian Hockey League history.

The CHL unveiled the former Laval Voisins superstar Thursday as the No. 1 player on its Top 50 Players of the Last 50 Years ranking, capping a months-long countdown celebrating the league’s 50th anniversary season.

Lemieux finished ahead of fellow Pittsburgh Penguin icon Sidney Crosby at No. 2, while Wayne Gretzky, Connor McDavid and Mike Bossy rounded out the top five.

For a league that has produced generations of hockey icons, the choice ultimately came down to dominance. And no player in CHL history overwhelmed junior hockey quite like Lemieux.

His legendary 1983-84 season with Laval remains untouched more than four decades later. Lemieux scored a staggering 133 goals and 282 points in just 70 games, both still CHL single-season records. He added 149 assists, recorded a 61-game point streak, produced 21 hat tricks and reached the 50-goal mark in only 27 games.

The numbers still read like fiction.

In his final regular-season game in junior hockey, Lemieux exploded for six goals and five assists in a 16-4 win over Longueuil, punctuating one of the most dominant individual campaigns the sport has ever seen.

“I'm honored to be chosen among this group of great players,” Lemieux said in the CHL release. “My time at Laval and in the QMJHL played a big role in preparing me for an NHL career.”

CHL president Dan MacKenzie called Lemieux’s junior dominance “one of the defining achievements in CHL history,” pointing specifically to the standard established during the 1983-84 season.

Lemieux’s brilliance extended beyond the regular season. He produced 52 points in 14 playoff games during Laval’s 1984 QMJHL championship run, scoring 29 playoff goals — a league record that stood for 14 years.

Across three seasons with Laval, the Montreal native amassed 247 goals and 562 points in 200 regular-season games before becoming the first overall pick of the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 1984 NHL Draft.

What followed only strengthened his case.

Lemieux became one of hockey’s defining figures, winning two Stanley Cups, three Hart Trophies, six Art Ross Trophies and two Conn Smythe Trophies while building a Hall of Fame career despite repeated health battles that interrupted parts of his prime.

He retired with 690 goals and 1,723 points in 915 NHL games and remains one of the most gifted offensive players the sport has ever seen.

Internationally, Lemieux also captained Canada to Olympic gold in 2002 and World Cup gold in 2004, adding to a résumé that stretches across every level of the game.

The final CHL Top 50 rankings were determined through a combination of media voting and fan voting, with more than 40 media members participating in the selection process.

For a generation of hockey fans, the debate over the greatest player in CHL history likely always began with one name anyway.

Now it officially ends there too.