It’s easy for fans of the Pittsburgh Penguins to take the talent they’ve had the privilege of watching over the years for granted. It has become somewhat expected by the team’s faithful that they possess a world-class talent such as Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, Sidney Crosby, or Evgeni Malkin.
More From History
However, the truth is most organizations will never have a player of that caliber. The Pittsburgh Penguins were an irrelevant franchise leading up to 1984. In the season prior, they did just as Buffalo and others did last season and successfully tanked in order to land the best player to enter the NHL since Wayne Gretzky, and that was Lemieux.