Going Down Memory Lane

The Greatest Pittsburgh Penguin in Franchise History is obviously Mario Lemieux and little chance anyone is ever coming through that door that will come close to Lemieux.

Sidney Crosby has moved into the second greatest Penguin territory and is arguably the Penguins most accomplished player in team history from an individual/team accolade perspective.

Sorry Evgeni Malkin, Jaromir Jagr is hands down the third greatest Penguin of all-time and it’s not even close. This notion that Malkin is above Jagr is disrespectful to Jagr. Behind Lemieux, Jagr was the second-most dominant player to ever put on a Penguins jersey. By year three in 1992-1993, Jagr started to clearly emerge as a 10-forward in the game and from 1995 – 2001 Jagr was the game’s most dominant presence and how Jagr torched the league in the trap/left wing lock era gets overlooked. This guy somehow led the league in scoring in back-to-back seasons with Kevin Constantine as his coach. Jagr should be awarded an ownership stake for that.

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Greatness that was unmatched: In Jagr’s final seven seasons with Pittsburgh from 1994-1995 through 2000-2001, Jagr lead the league in points in five of those seven seasons; 1995 lockout season Jagr was tied for first in the league with Eric Lindros, followed by four straight Art Ross Winning Seasons 97/98, 98/99, 99/00, 00/01 to cap off his Penguins career.

In 1995-1996 Jagr posted a top-2 finish with a career-high 149 points, but some guy named Mario Lemieux took home the scoring title that year with a 161-point campaign after taking off the 1995 season. Jagr’s seven-year run (1995-2001) saw him dominate the league like few others have or ever will and the consistency on a year-to-year basis to put up the production he did was something else and why he’s hands down the third greatest Penguin of all-time. The 1996-1997 season was the only year over that span where Jagr didn’t place a top-2 finish in points. There’s a reason though. Jagr missed 19 games that season and was second in the league points per game at 1.50 Pts/game. Mario Lemieux was tops at 1.60 Pts/game.

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Favorite Jagr Season: 1995-1996

Beautiful hockey is how to describe the 1995-1996 Pittsburgh Penguins. Pittsburgh was second in the Eastern Conference in points and lead the league in goals, even strength goals, power play goals and as a team posted a league-high 14% shooting percentage. 1st in the league in points was Mario Lemieux with 69 goals and 161 points in just 70 games. 2nd in the league in points was Jaromir Jagr who had a career high 62 goals and 149 points. The NHL will never see a 1-2 offensive punch like Lemieux/Jagr from that season. Jagr led the league with 41 even strength goals and 54 even strength assists, while Lemieux produced at almost a 190-point pace. Lemieux, Jagr and Ron Francis (119 points) combined for 429 points on the season. The NHL was robbed of a Gretzky – Lemieux Stanley Cup Final in 1993 but the 1995-1996 season Penguin fans were robbed of the last great chance of the Lemieux/Jagr combo reaching the Stanley Cup Final where both players at the same time were still at or near their peak offensively.

And it gets overlooked how much great young talent that 1995-1996 Penguins team had. Hall-of-Famer Sergei Zubov was 25 years Old, Markus Naslund 22 years old, Petr Nedved 24 years old, Bryan Smolinski 24 years old, Glenn Murray 23 years old. As Lemieux retired following the 1996-1997 season, by the start of the 1997-1998 season not one of Zubov, Naslund, Nedved, Smolinski or Murray were still on the Penguins roster which makes what Jagr did in 1997-1998 with the roster under him and a trap crazy coach all the more unbelievable in how he still torched the league whether he had great talent around him or little talent around him like 1997-1998 roster.

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The Entertaining Summer of 2011 Jagr Watch

Jaromir Jagr provided great memories and possibly stress for reporters by in 2011, known as Jagr watch. There were two different instances where a Jagr return was in play. After Marian Hossa spurned the Penguins in the summer of 2008, a reach out to Jagr was made by not then General Manager Ray Shero but a former teammate of Jagr’s to a put a feeler out. It never got serious as Jagr was still chasing money at that stage of his career and was locked in on playing in Europe. 2011 was much different, it brought a wild couple weeks with numerous wild conversations with the agent, ect, as Jagr would end up signing a 1 year, $3.3 million contract with the Philadelphia Flyers. Maybe Jagr was always going to take the biggest offer no matter where it came from, but friends and former teammates of Jagr’s have all said, Jagr was type of guy then who had to be wooed and he just never felt the love from Pittsburgh.

Ray Shero never really wanted to sign Jagr and felt it was being pushed on him by David Morehouse; Dan Bylsma told Jagr in a phone conversation he would be the third line right winger behind Pascal Dupuis/Tyler Kennedy and envisioned him running the second power play unit, telling Jagr there was a chance he wouldn’t see many power play minutes. Things got so personal Shero sent out a press release prior to Jagr signing with the Flyers that the Penguins made a 1 year, $2 million offer to Jagr. Those were just some wild times and Jagr would get the last laugh as he had a pretty productive season with the Flyers and Philadelphia would upset the Penguins in Round 1. What a series that was for all the wrong reasons from Pittsburgh’s perspective as the curse of not signing Jagr saw him beat the Penguins again in the 2013 playoffs in a Bruins upset sweep of Pittsburgh.

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