Penguins announce 4 franchise icons in Class of 2025 for relaunched team hall of fame
By any measure, the 1983-84 season was the worst in the history of the Pittsburgh Penguins.
And it was no accident.
The roster was constructed with the intent of being awful. And then it was progressively whittled down to something even worse.
As terrible as those seven months were that led to an obscene 16-58-6 record — the primary source of obscenities was rooted in the disbelief this sad squad was capable of winning 16 games — it was necessary for the existence of the franchise as it allowed the Penguins to draft savior Mario Lemieux.
Were it not for the 1983-84 campaign and Lemieux’s arrival, the Penguins might have moved to another city or even folded and become a peculiar footnote in the sporting history of Pittsburgh like the Ironmen, a professional basketball team in the 1940s, or the Triangles, a tennis franchise in the 1970s.
The NHL already had failed in Pittsburgh when the onset of the Great Depression led to a team called the Pirates becoming insolvent in 1930 after only five years of existence.
Eddie Johnston ensured the Penguins would not share that fate as he orchestrated that dreadful 1983-84 season — some would accuse him of outright tanking — to secure Lemieux’s arrival. More than four decades later, the Penguins have become a model franchise in the NHL, having won the Stanley Cup five times since 1991 (most in the league over that span).
A former general manager and coach of the Penguins, Johnston will be entering the team’s relaunched hall of fame next month alongside coach Scotty Bowman, center Ron Francis and left winger Kevin Stevens. The team announced its first class of inductees since 2013 on Tuesday.
Johnston has never admitted — publicly, at least — to anything scurrilous about how he constructed that squalid 1983-84 team. But he has never denied why the Penguins wanted the top overall selection in the 1984 NHL Draft.
“You need that type of player in Mario,” the 89-year-old Johnston said during a recent video conference. “He was the foundation. All of a sudden, you get a player that’s the best player in the game.
“Mario was the guy that changed the whole franchise. He gave us the opportunity to win (championships).”
The first of the franchise’s five Stanley Cup championships were won in 1991 with Bowman, Francis and Stevens serving prominent roles.
Coach of the dominant Montreal Canadiens dynasty of the late 1970s, Bowman was in the midst of something of a hiatus after a seven-year stint as coach and general manager of the Buffalo Sabres when, in 1991, he joined the Penguins as director of player personnel.
In that capacity, he helped general manager Craig Patrick craft the roster that led to the franchise’s first championship.
Tragedy forced him out of the front office and behind the bench when head coach Bob Johnson became ill with brain cancer during the 1991 offseason, eventually succumbing to the disease in November 1991.
“By spending a lot of time with Bob, especially in the (1991) playoffs, I knew what kind of work that he wanted to get done as a coach,” said Bowman, 90. “It wasn’t easy, but I followed the year before of how he ran practices, the travel. We kind of just tried to pick up and do the same things.”
The Penguins did the same thing by June 1992 and repeated as Stanley Cup champions.
“(Bowman and Johnson) were kind of opposite types of coaches, but we adapted,” Stevens said. “Scotty was great about it. He didn’t come in and try to change all of these things. He kind of just let the thing go and made the changes he had to make to make us a better team. He was great. A big part of our wins.”
Big was an apt way to describe Stevens, a stout 6-foot-3 and 231 pounds during his career. His voice and figures might have been even larger.
Arguably the dominant power forward of the early 1990s, Stevens, now 60, still holds the franchise’s single-postseason mark with 17 goals in 1991.
“He was a power forward of the best variety at that time,” Bowman said. “He was big and strong. His touch around the net was unbelievable. He was a great fit for the Penguins.”
Francis wound up being a strong fit as well after the Penguins acquired him — as well as defensemen Ulf Samuelsson and Grant Jennings — via a blockbuster trade with the Hartford Whalers in March 1991.
Despite reaching the 100-point barrier twice as a member of the team and even serving as captain, Francis was never the Penguins’ top player. In fact, he was more than comfortable to be in Lemieux’s shadow.
“When I got traded there, we did the morning skate,” said the 62-year-old Francis. “After the morning skate, Bob Johnson asked me to stop by his office. So, I came by his office, and after some small talk, he said, ‘We have this kid here, he wears No. 66. He’s a pretty good player.’
“I said, ‘Yeah, where are you going with this Bob?’
“He said, ‘Well, he’s our No. 1 centerman.’
“I said, ‘Bob, I get it. I’m good. I just want to help this team win. Put me wherever you need me, and things will be good.’ ”
Things largely have been good for the Penguins since 1984.
“La premiere choix de l’equipe Pittsburgh, le numero soixante-six, Mario Lemieux!” Johnston said, recalling what he read out in French on a microphone during the NHL Draft on June 9, 1984. “That was one of the great days for me and a great day for the city of Pittsburgh.”
Seth Rorabaugh is a TribLive reporter covering the Pittsburgh Penguins. A North Huntingdon native, he joined the Trib in 2019 and has covered the Penguins since 2007. He can be reached at srorabaugh@triblive.com.
Remove the ads from your TribLIVE reading experience but still support the journalists who create the content with TribLIVE Ad-Free.