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Jaromír Jágr Template:Audio (born February 15, 1972 in Kladno, Czech Republic) is regarded as one of the top ice hockey players in the NHL today, and is arguably the best European player that has ever worn an NHL uniform.
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Career overview
Jágr currently plays with the New York Rangers. He still resides in the Czech Republic during the off-season. His father, also named Jaromír Jágr, is prosperous and owns a chain of hotels. The younger Jágr showed his athletic aptitude early; he began skating at age three and was always one of the best players as he worked his way up through the Czech hockey leagues. At the age of 16, he was playing at the highest level of competition in Czechoslovakia.
Jágr was the first Czechoslovakian player to be drafted by the NHL without first having to defect to the west. He was taken by the Pittsburgh Penguins with #5 pick in the 1990 NHL Entry Draft and played with them for the next ten years. He was a supporting player with the powerhouse Penguins that won back-to-back Stanley Cups in 1991 and 1992.
Early in his career with the Penguins, Jágr - then sporting long hair - was often promoted as a teen idol, whom teenaged girls found adorable, and teenage boys admired his athletic talent. Jágr possessed a sense of humor about the marketing buzz around him. Before he had a grasp of the English language, he could be heard reading the daily weather forecast on Pittsburgh radio station WDVE in his broken, thickly accented English. He and team mate (and fellow countryman) Jan Hrdina were promoted as the "Czechmates", a play on the term "checkmate" from chess. Some Penguins fans thought that the letters in his first name could be scrambled to form "Mario Jr", a reference to elder team mate Mario Lemieux.
It was in the later years that he truly broke out and became the most dominant right wing in the league. He developed into an amazingly strong forward, blessed with powerful legs and a scoring touch rivaled by few players in the last quarter-century other than Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux. From 1994-95 to 2000-01 on a decent Penguins team, Jágr won six NHL scoring titles including four in a row from 1997-98 to 2000-01, and in the 1995-96 season scored 149 points. In 1998 he led the Czech Republic's team to a gold medal at the Nagano Olympics.
With the return of Mario Lemieux from retirement, the Penguins had two superstars, but friction developed between the two. Also the struggling, small-market Penguins could no longer hope to meet Jágr's massive salary demands. Thus in 2001 they traded him to the Washington Capitals for three young prospects.
The Capitals made Jágr one of the most highly paid players in the NHL with an $11 million per year deal. Jágr, however, failed to perform. In the 2001-2002 season Washington failed to make the playoffs and Jágr appeared to being playing at a level far below that which had been expected. In 2002-2003 Washington managed to finish 6th overall in the Eastern Conference, but lost to the upstart Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round of the playoffs. (Tampa Bay would win the Stanley Cup in the next 2003-04 NHL Season.) While in Washington, Jágr did not experience as much popularity as fellow forward Peter Bondra.
Disgruntled, the Washington ownership spent much of 2003 trying to trade Jágr, but a year before a new Collective Bargaining Agreement is to be signed, few teams were willing to risk $11 million on Jágr. Eventually he was traded to New York for Anson Carter and an agreement that Washington would pay four million dollars per year of Jágr's salary. Jágr also agreed to a million dollar a year pay cut to allow the trade to go ahead.
During the NHL labor dispute in 2004, he played for Kladno in the Czech Republic, and afterwards for the Avangard ice-hockey team at Omsk in Russia.
Jágr wears the number 68 in honor of the Prague Spring rebellion of 1968 (also, his grandfather died in that year).
Jágr has been the subject of several notorious off ice incidents. He appeared in drag at the 1999 opening of his sports bar in the Czech Republic. Although he has repeatedly denied that he has a gambling problem, he has admitted that he settled debts totaling US$950,000 with two internet gambling sites between 1998 and 2002. In 2003, the IRS filed a US$3.27 million lien against him for unpaid taxes for the 2001 tax year. Only a few months before, Jágr had settled a US$350,000 claim for taxes dating to 1999.
He has earned a reputation as a "coach killer" by some sports media pundits in Pittsburgh and Washington. The firings of Kevin Constantine and Ivan Hlinka in Pittsburgh and Bruce Cassidy in Washington were widely blamed on their inability to get along with Jágr. His now infamous quote to one Pittsburgh reporter that he felt like he was "dying alive" in a Penguin uniform has been well publicized in the cities where he has subsequently played.
Jaromír Jagr returned to the Jagr of old at this year's World Hockey Championship in Austria. He led the Czech Republic to Gold and was elected a tournament all-star in the process.
Awards
- 1991 - NHL All-Rookie Team
- Stanley Cup Championship - 1991 and 1992 with the Pittsburgh Penguins
- 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 - NHL First Team All-Star
- 1995, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 - Art Ross Trophy
- 1997 - NHL Second Team All-Star
- 1999 - Hart Trophy
- 1999, 2000, 2001 - Lester B. Pearson Award
- 1998 Olympic Gold Medal for Czech Republic in the Nagano Olympics
- 2005 IIHF World Hockey Championship Gold Medal
Records
- Most assists by a rookie in Stanley Cup Finals (1991) - 5.
- Most regular season points by a right wing (1995-1996) - 149.
- Most regular season assists by a right wing (1995-1996) - 87.
- Most regular season points by a European-born player (1995-1996) - 149.
External link
- Jaromir Jagr statistics (http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php3?encode=TRUE&pid=2497)
- "Jagr is a Pathetic Sports Figure" by Ron Cook (http://www.post-gazette.com/SPORTS/columnists/20030610cook0610p1.asp)
- Jagr - I'm Dying Alive (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/hockey/nhl/news/2000/12/09/frustrated_jagr_ap/)
| Preceded by: Ron Francis |
Pittsburgh Penguins Captains | Succeeded by: Mario Lemieux |