Feb 12, 2003 4 min read

PITTSBURGH (AP) – As if the Pittsburgh Penguins didn’t have enough worries, star Mario Lemieux gave them another Tuesday: He’s not certain if he’ll play next season. Just as he did a year ago, Lemieux plans to wait and talk with his family and close friends during the offseason before deciding whether he’ll return to play in the fall.

“Every year, I sit down with my family and some of my good friends, and that’s not going to change this year,” Lemieux said. “(Then) I’ll have a decision.”

A year ago, Lemieux seemed eager to return despite missing nearly three-quarters of the season with a hip injury. This season, at least until Tuesday, Lemieux had dropped no hints that he was even thinking about not playing next season.

Despite missing nearly a month with a groin injury, the 37-year-old Lemieux has been the NHL’s leading scorer nearly all season. He has 20 goals and 53 assists for a league-high 73 points in 44 games going into Wednesday’s game against Ottawa, giving him a two-point lead over Vancouver’s Markus Naslund.

What complicates the decision is that Lemieux owns the Penguins in addition to being their best player, and another retirement could be a crushing blow to the team at the box office.

Since Lemieux came out of a 44-month retirement in December 2000, a year after he bought the team in bankruptcy court, the Penguins have been forced to trade All-Star forwards Jaromir Jagr and Alexei Kovalev for financial reasons. They also dealt defenseman Darius Kasparaitis and let forward Robert Lang sign with Washington because they couldn’t afford to keep them.

With attendance already down 7 percent this season and the Penguins playing to an unusually low 87 percent of capacity at Mellon Arena, the team probably doesn’t want to think what it might draw next season without Lemieux.

Asked if that will play any role in his decision, Lemieux said, “Yeah. It’s always a tough decision when you walk away from the game, especially when you’re 37, 38 _ you have to think about a lot of people. You have to make the right decision and I know I’ll make the right decision.”

What could factor into his choice is the Penguins’ apparent readiness, for the first time since Lemieux was drafted in 1984, to adopt a defense-first system. They began playing such a style last month with success, when Lemieux was injured and out, and he suggested Tuesday that they need to stay with it.

With most of the franchise’s top goal scorers over the last decade now playing elsewhere, Lemieux said the Penguins probably can’t keep playing the fast-break, freewheeling style they perfected while winning Stanley Cups in 1991 and 1992.

“I think the game has changed over the last couple of years, and it’s very difficult to play the way we played in the early 1990s,” Lemieux said. “Every team we play every night plays well defensively. That’s probably where the game is going now; keep the game low-scoring. New Jersey is winning that way, and Minnesota is a perfect example. They have a $20 million payroll, but they’re doing pretty well.”

Lemieux has traditionally disliked playing such a style, and may not want to go into a full season knowing that the Penguins will be playing a conservative, low-scoring system.

“I’m going to enjoy the rest of the season but, like I’ve said before, there’s only a few games left, there’s only a few years left,” he said. “So I’m going to play the rest of the year, then sit down with the right people and make the right decision for myself and, especially, the franchise.

“That’s going to be an important decision.”