PITTSBURGH – There is so much more to this whole Jaromir Jagr business than meets the eye. There just has to be. You don’t go from being the league’s leading scorer four-times running, from being an enthusiastic, fresh-faced, apple-cheeked marquee performer to this a-bedraggled, put-upon athlete who can’t get anything done on the ice and has his organization, teammates and league wondering why.
Jagr doesn’t have a point yet against the Devils. He’s had maybe two scoring chances in three games against the defending champions, a team he has traditionally scared to death and often beaten all by his lonesome. He hasn’t been able to get to the net, hasn’t been able to dangle. He short-shifts himself, he looks out of shape, his behavior is erratic, his persona is inscrutable.
This is it in Pittsburgh for Jagr. It has to be. The romance has ended. Like most, it’s ending badly. With $20.7 million due over the next two years, his contract is simply unaffordable. It might be anyway, but certainly it is on a team that has only four players signed for next year, and will have to negotiate new deals with the entire second line that features Alexei Kovalev, who registered 44 goals and 95 points; Martin Straka, who also came in with 95 points; Robert Lang, who recorded 80 points. All three are essential players, all three are eligible for salary arbitration. Darius Kasparaitis, too, will need a new deal, though he’s also likely to be dealt.
And there is the owner himself. Will Mario Lemieux be willing to play for the league average again?
Jagr is going to be traded and he knows it. But here’s the rub. There aren’t likely to be many teams willing to ante to get into the market. It’s not just the contract, though the money does all but eliminate about two dozen of the league’s 30 franchises from the action. There’s other baggage, too; heavy baggage everyone around the league has been whispering about for months.
Everyone around the league knows of Jagr’s attraction to casinos, how he is regularly flown by private jet, or by helicopter, or driven by limo, to Atlantic City. The Post has learned from an impeccable Atlantic City source that Jagr has a regular baccarat game going at a private table with a credit line of $500,000 at Caesars. Jagr is also known to have suffered huge losses in the stock market, with some believing the hit to be as great as $20M, though that number has not been confirmed.
So a field interested in obtaining Jagr that would be small enough under the best or circumstances, is further narrowed. No one is sure what they’ll be getting: the dominant player who has won the Art Ross four straight years – and who, playing far below capacity, scored 52 goals in doing so this season, the second-highest total of his career – or the moody player who has displayed startling indifference from time to time.
Who’s in? Yesterday, for the first time, we heard Detroit linked to a possible deal for No. 68. A well-connected informant told The Post of a potential Jagr for Sergei Fedorov scenario. It makes sense for the Penguins, what with the 31-year-old Fedorov, two years Jagr’s senior, under contract for two more years at just $2M per at the back-end of that monster front-loaded deal he signed in 1998.
Though GM Dean Lombardi has publicly refuted our report of the Sharks’ interest in Jagr, numerous industry sources have told The Post that San Jose will investigate acquiring the winger. So count the Sharks in.
And then there are the Rangers. Of course, there are the Rangers.
Two years ago there would have been no debate. Last year there would have been no debate. Now, there seems to be great debate about the wisdom of bringing the league’s leading scorer to Broadway. This is a reflection on both Jagr and on all the failures the Rangers have experienced with high-profile acquisitions the last four seasons. This is also ridiculous.
Jagr is 29. He has talent to die for. When he is happy, he alone is worth the price of admission, even the inflated price of admission to the world’s most famous arena. Obviously, Glen Sather has much homework to do here, and obviously he can’t part with very much in order to get him. Taking on the contract is burden enough; Sather cannot empty the prospect inventory to bring him here.
But Jagr playing in New York as a headline, Jagr playing with his friend Petr Nedved, Jagr reinvigorated, beginning his second hockey life? Are you kidding me?
Of course, the Rangers should try to get him. Of course, they should.
He is Jaromir Jagr.
Though nobody can tell that right now.
