Former NHL goaltender Ron Hextall faced Mario Lemieux for 11 seasons, nine of them as a member of the Philadelphia Flyers. Hextall, now a scout for the Flyers, recently spoke with ESPN.com's Rob Parent about Lemieux and his comeback.

He's going to be real good. His ability is so much better than everyone else's. I mean, you can look at a guy and say he's been away for three years, and he's 35-years old, and he wants to make a comeback and say, "No way, he's not going to make it." But with Mario, it's different. He's a special case. I hear he's in the best shape of his life, although that's probably not saying much because I don't know if he was in such great shape before. But I think a guy at 35 realizes he can't do the same things he did at 25.

	Lemieux's goals against…
		Goaltender	Goals
	1.	John Vanbiesbrouk	30
	2.	Empty net	29
	3.	Ron Hextall	19
	4.	Don Beaupre	15
	5.	Pete Peeters	14
		Kelly Hrudey	14
		Bill Ranford	14
		Glenn Healy	14
	9.	Sean Burke	13
	10.	Six tied at	11

As a goalie, you have to be on top of your game against him, or you're going to be in big trouble. The thing that set him apart from all the other players was his skill level. But along with that skill level he had great strength and reach. That can be an awesome combination and just too hard to defend. Just the way he can protect a puck and not give your guy a chance to check him, I don't think there are any other players that can do that.

I had a mental book on him all those years. One thing I kept was breakaways – and he'd literally get a couple of them a game. Ninety percent of the time, he'd either go high glove side or he'd pull it and deke you to the opposite side. But he could take it out to the right so wide on you – he'd take it 10 or 12 feet and for a goalie, that's a long way to go. If you cheated on him, he'd go high glove, and he'd stick it there, too. And if you moved to protect that side, he'd just deke you.

Success against Lemieux was limited. I'd say if you stopped him 50 percent of the time he faced you, you were having a lot of success against him.