Jaromir Jagr spurns the Penguins, signs with the Flyers

From Brad Richards to the other story of the 2011 NHL Free Agency: #68

Stop the presses, ladies and gentlemen. Jagr Watch is over. After flirting with both the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Detroit Red Wings, Czech Republic superstar Jaromir Jagr – one of the select Triple Crown Club, the insanely lucky guys who've won the holy trinity of hockey hardware, an Olympic Gold Medal, a World Championship Gold Medal and a Stanley Cup – has signed a one-year deal with the Philadelphia Flyers.

At the somewhat-faded superstar who spent the last three seasons in the Russian KHL, putting up eye-popping numbers in a league nowhere near as long or as physical or as stocked with top-to-bottom talent as the National Hockey League is, got to experience a new sort of notoriety during the hunt, this time in the social media realm. Jagr Watch, for a time, was a trending hash tag on Twitter, and now it’ll be a season-long media odyssey, tracking the progress of the smooth-skating Czech through what could be an interesting few months in Philadelphia.

Make no mistake, the Jagr trade was definitely biggest story on the first day of NHL Free Agency, which really didn't produce much in the way of drama.

Except for this one, way out of left field, and certainly a headline maker in the state of Pennsylvania and in so many other hockey markets. Everyone’s interested, just for the dynamic of the whole situation and because Philly were a completely unheralded team as far as the chase for Jagr went. We’d heard Pittsburgh and Detroit, even Montreal for a time, but the Philadelphia Flyers? No. Not until they announced they’d signed Jagr to the one-season deal. Talk about a covert strike!

Imagine what this must feel like at the Penguins bunker, for everyone from Mario Lemieux on down the line in that organisation. Considering Jagr played in two Stanley Cups with the Pens in the 90's and seemed set to return to Pittsburgh for next season, touted as being a farewell season, this is a massive slap in the face for the franchise, and probably means that Jagr will never have his #68 jersey retired and hoisted into the rafters of the new Consol Energy Arena. After all the talk, about how his heart is in Pittsburgh. Well, his skating and shooting are in Philadelphia right now.

What sort of a brain fade was Jagr having? Well, clearly a big enough one that he would risk alienating a fan base – or is that definitely alienate a fan base? – who have loved him forever, even when he played with the Capitals or the Rangers, by signing a completely mystifying and out-of-the-blue contract with the biggest rivals the Penguins have, their cross-state enemies, the Flyers.

This whole situation went from the rumours suggesting that Jagr would play a final season in Pittsburgh, retire and have the Penguins retire his jersey to a season with the Flyers, to the very likely prospect of being booed early and often during the first Penguins-Flyers game early next season.

It’s been a strange free agency/draft trade period for the Flyers, who figure to have a radically different look in a team now without Jeff Carter, Mike Richards and Ville Leino among others, but with names like Ilya Bryzgalov, Max Talbot and Andreas Lilja to take their places. Now, into that mix, comes Jagr, probably a fading superstar, whose locker room relationship with presumed captain Chris Pronger and head coach Peter Laviolette will be interesting to say the least. But not, perhaps, as interesting as his first appearance in Pittsburgh.

The good news? Well, like most, if not all, hockey fans salivated ridiculously for the first Montreal-Boston clash after the Chara/Pacioretty hit – a 7-0 Boston drubbing at TD Garden, for the record – were all salivating for Jagr’s first appearance in the Flyers uniform in Pittsburgh.