Life Roughly How Lemieux Remembers

Somewhere, Brett Hull is laughing his head off.

The guffaw replaces the look of wonder he had when Mario Lemieux listed his reasons for putting skates back on in Pittsburgh.

The game is hockey again, Lemieux said. The assault on ice is over, because the NHL's insistence on enforcing the rules has taken away the hacking and whacking that sent him into premature retirement 3 1/2 years ago.

Hull questioned the view from the owner's box in Mellon Arena.

"I wonder what game he's watching," was the gist of his assessment.

It's not the same one that's being played against the Penguins, which is why Craig Patrick, who handles Lemieux's heavy lifting as general manager of the team, did some serious work over the weekend. He traded for three bodies big enough to put the Steelers in the Super Bowl, getting former King Steve McKenna from Minnesota, winger Krzysztof Oliwa from Columbus and a former Lemieux teammate, Kevin Stevens, from Philadelphia.

Stevens, also a former King, spent last summer in rehab after a St. Louis arrest last season for allegedly smoking crack cocaine with a prostitute. Stevens had 54- and 55-goal seasons while playing on a line with Lemieux in the early 1990s, and rewarded the guy who assisted on most of them with 254 and 177 penalty minutes, respectively.

McKenna is 6 feet 8, 255 pounds; Stevens is 6-3, 230 and Oliwa is 6-5, 235, and their combined mission is to protect the boss.

To punish the Todd Gills of the world when they put a glove in Lemieux's face, as he did when the Penguins played Boston.

To gain retribution from the Zdeno Charas of the NHL when they whack the owner/winger on the back of the head with a stick, as Chara did when Pittsburgh played the Islanders on Friday night.

"If you look at our past few games, we've been pushed around quite a bit," Lemieux said. "[There has been] a little bit of a lack of respect for our organization, and that's not good for anybody."

It's particularly not good for Lemieux, who said he could handle the rough stuff and that if he thought he couldn't, he would have stayed in the owner's box drinking wine.

But he has found the rough stuff is not really any different from when he was a 30-year-old stripling skating with a target on his back.

It hasn't inhibited his results. Lemieux has nine goals and 10 assists in nine games and is on pace to score 46 goals, which could win him the Richard Trophy after spotting the competition 35 games in this offense-challenged season.