Jagr praises Giroux’s play
PHILADELPHIA — When Jaromir Jagr was a fixture in the room down the hallway from where he sat on this Thursday afternoon, Claude Giroux was a fixture as Jagr’s center.
Giroux was also a regular on the scoresheets during that 2011-12 Flyers season that featured Jagr as elder star.
As Giroux prepared to take the mantle that everyone knew would be his after that season, that of Flyers team captain, Jagr chose to leave over the summer, signing a free agent contract offer in July 2012 from Dallas.
While Giroux still averaged a point per game in the post-lockout 201213 shortened season, he didn’t quite look like the
season that featured Jagr as elder star.
As Giroux prepared to take the mantle that everyone knew would be his after that season, that of Flyers team captain, Jagr chose to leave over the summer, signing a free agent contract offer in July 2012 from Dallas.
While Giroux still averaged a point per game in the post-lockout 201213 shortened season, he didn’t quite look like the Giroux of two prior seasons and perhaps by cause and effect, the Flyers didn’t look like the same team either, ultimately falling short of the playoffs.
Now, as Jagr and his latest team, the New Jersey Devils, hit town for a game tonight, he would be hard-pressed to find his old linemate’s name on a lot of scoresheets. Giroux has no goals, seven assists and is a minus-10 through the Flyers’ first 14 games of the season.
But little matter. Jagr knows he doesn’t have to look for his friend’s name to know how he’s playing.
“I don’t see many games,” Jagr said. “I’m not like you guys, judge the guys by stats. ... I think he’s playing well. I could tell from the game we played against him (Saturday), he was the best player on the ice.”
The Flyers won that game 1-0 at Prudential Center, just a day after suffering a 7-0 home loss at the hands of the Washington Capitals. But Jagr’s not going to say anything about Giroux’s lack of stats or the Flyers’ ridiculous 1.57 goals per game average thus far.
He knows he has enough concerns of his own.
“Well, we have the same problem,” said Jagr, who leads the light scoring Devils with 10 points (3 goals, 7 assists). “There’s so many things going into that. First of all, (Giroux’s) one player. One guy doesn’t play alone and you’ve got the other 20 guys around him or the four guys with him on the ice.”
But Jagr might also think the general feeling that scoring is down around the league, especially in the Eastern Conference, might be playing into this, too.
“Some coaches like to play more defense than offense,” Jagr said. “For example, look at San Jose. They are going to win the game 6-5, and the Flyers are going to win 1-nothing. The offense in San Jose looks good, but you’re going to criticize the defense and the goaltender. ... There’s not going to be any team that’s going to beat the other team 7-0 or 6-0. It not going to happen.”
Maybe he didn’t catch that Capitals-Flyers game Friday night.
Anyway, a theory that would be much closer to the truth is that both Gir- oux and Scott Hartnell — who scored his first goal of the season Tuesday night in Carolina and hadn’t garnered an assist in 36 games heading into Thursday night’s Devils game — were much better players with Jagr by their side on the top line. In that one Jagr season of 2011-12, Hartnell had the most productive season of his career with 37 goals and 30 assists, and was picked for the All-Star game. Giroux had 28 goals and 65 assists for 93 points, by far a career best.
But the Flyers chose to not give Jagr an offer to stay. The story was that general manager Paul Holmgren was too caught up in the bidding war that summer for Ryan Suter and Zach Parise, and so had asked Jagr to wait for that process to work itself out. Well, Jagr signed with Dallas on July 3, and Suter and Parise signed together with Minnesota the very next day.
“I don’t want to go back to what happened,” said Jagr, who was sent to Boston from the Stars last spring at the trade deadline, finished as a Cup runnerup, then signed with the Devils this summer. “I didn’t want to leave (Philadelphia), but I had no choice. I had a lot of fun then, no question. I’m having a lot of fun right now. You just never know what life’s going to bring you.”
So he bolted. The Flyers’ top-line guys haven’t been the same since.
Just don’t tell Jagr that.
——— Steve Downie, quite literally knocked out of his first game as a re-born Flyer last Friday against the Caps, was back at the morning practice Thursday sporting a shiner under his left eye that looks like it came straight from a Hollywood makeup room.
Downie had spent two nights in the hospital after getting clocked by Washington’s Aaron Volpatti.
“I wasn’t too scared,” he said. “It was only precautionary reasons that I went there. It’s healing well.”
He says it did leave him with a sinus clog that has to dissipate before he can get medical clearance to play again.
“I’m waiting for those to clear up and start breathing again,” Downie said.
Looking back, Downie said he “made a mistake in a fight and I paid for it.
“I just put myself in a vulnerable position to get hit and I got hit,” he said. “It sucks to lose those.”
As for the game, he added, “The loss hurt more than my face.”