Pittsburgh's brightest shining star -- hockey-wise -- was celebrated, toasted and heralded at the Civic Arena on Wednesday night, November 19th.

Unless you've just woken up from a decades old Rip Van Winkle-ish comatose state, you know we're talkin' about the one, the only... Mario Lemieux.

Draped across one end of the Civic Arena was a huge banner with Lemieux's sweater number -- 66 -- emblazoned and immortalized upon it. It was raised to the arena ceiling at the conclusion of a thirty-minute or so celebration of his 12 seasons with the Pittsburgh Penguins.

During the half hour presentation, Lemieux received no fewer than four standing ovations, some overlapping, as the Pittsburgh area's sporting public thanked him for his stellar performance on and off the ice over the years.

Mario Lemieux's former teammates presented him with a customized five-magnum bottle of cabernet sauvignon. Howard Baldwin and Roger Marino, Penguins co-owners, then gave him a gold medallion and a $250,000 check for the Mario Lemieux Foundation for cancer research.

The jubilee came just two days after Lemieux's enshrinement in the Hockey Hall of Fame.