Jagr sits out Florida return
Career exit plan is said to be in the works
The locker has a new inhabitant inside the BB&T Center, tucked away in the corner of the home dressing room, bracketed by pupils like Aleksander Barkov and Jonathan Huberdeau on one side and a wall on the other.
It was once Jaromir Jagr’s stall in Sunrise, where he skirted the decline of old age for parts of three seasons and led a young Florida Panthers forwards corps to a division championship two seasons ago.
While less successful than his remarkable Stanley Cup runs with Pittsburgh in the early 1990s, it was the home of Jagr’s last few gifts to the hockey world — his 10th All-Star Game appearance, his climb up the alltime points leaderboard and the return of his legendary mullet.
When the Clagary Flames visit the Florida Panthers tonight, it was supposed to be a return to Sunrise for Jagr, potentially the 45-year-old right wing’s final game in South Florida and the first against the Panthers since the team let him walk in free agency last summer.
It would have unbelievably been Jagr’s 178th time facing a former team in his 24-season, nine-team career.
But it appears Father Time has finally caught up to Jagr.
Jagr hasn’t played since Dec. 31, a hiatus officially excused by a “lower-body injury” but informally setting up the end of Jagr’s time in Calgary.
The team and Jagr are reportedly working on an exit plan for the Czech superstar and the Calgary Sun reported that Jagr wasn’t even on the Flames current fourgame road trip. Barring a last-minute surprise by the Flames, Jagr’s homecoming of sorts will go on without him.
In Florida, Jagr served as a mentor for Barkov and Huberdeau, the trio that formed the Panthers’ top line the past two seasons. This season, both are having career years with new winger Evgenii Dadonov. Huberdeau leads the team with 43 points, on pace to smash his career high of 59 points. Barkov has 40 points, also on pace to sail by his career high of 59 points.
Jagr’s effect isn’t lost on them.
“The main thing is probably how to be a professional hockey player and how to live a life like a hockey player,” Barkov said.
Huberdeau added: “Even if he’s 45, 44, he’s just a guy that wants to get better and wants to win.”
And although Barkov and Huberdeau primarily played alongside Jagr, players like second-line center Vincent Trocheck and forward Colton Sceviour also benefited from his presence with the Panthers.
“It’s good to watch him do what he does,” Trocheck said. “The way he works off the ice and on the ice in practice. There’s definitely things that you watch to see what it takes in order to play as long as he did.”
For Sceviour, it was not only Jagr’s work ethic that he noticed, but also his hockey mind. He noted that Jagr played in the “clutchand-grab” era earlier in his career, then had to adjust to the speed and skill of today’s game.
“He found ways to be successful when he was younger and a certain type of player,” Sceviour said. “Then he got older and had to adapt his game a little bit. Anytime you can play with a guy who’s found a way to have success so many different ways in so many different stages in the NHL, you can obviously pick his brain.”
The apparent conclusion of Jagr’s career hasn’t diminished the memories the Panthers carried of him.
Like Huberdeau’s first time meeting him after his trade to Florida in Feb. 2015: “I said ‘Hey, I’m Jonathan, nice to meet you.’ And then I was on the ice with him that night so that was pretty cool. That game, we were probably trying to pass him the puck, trying to respect him. After, he said ‘You guys got to keep the puck and make your play and I’ll just be there to support you guys.’”
Or Barkov’s recollection of Jagr’s dressing-room presence: “He’s always having fun and telling jokes, and joking on somebody. It didn’t feel like he was 45. It felt like was 22 just like I am.”
Or Sceviour’s introduction to him while teammates in Dallas: “I guarantee he doesn’t remember me. But I remember being kind of in awe of sitting beside him in the dressing room.”
Before Jagr departed Florida, Barkov collected a signed Jagr jersey (“It’s going to be pretty expensive in a couple years.”) and Sceviour now displays a signed Jagr stick by his pool table back home (“I have a onestick collection, and it’s Jaromir Jagr.”)
“He’s one of a kind,” Trocheck said, “that’s for sure.”