Jaromir Jagr’s Jersey Retirement Breaks Barriers for the Pittsburgh Penguins

Jaromir Jagr has always been a change agent with impeccable timing, even when he couldn’t control it. By timing and luck, he arrived in the NHL at the perfect moment for when it was starting being common and possible for Eastern European players to make their way over.

It was perfect timing for the Penguins franchise too, who used the boost Jagr gave them in the early years as a big piece of the puzzle to win the Stanley Cup in each of his first two seasons.

From there, Jagr became the player of the ‘90s, he won five Art Ross scoring titles, including four in a row from 1998-2001. He scored the overtime goal that retired Wayne Gretzky. He lifted the Czechs to an improbable but thrilling gold medal in the 1998 Olympics in the much-anticipated involvement of the top players in that competition.

On a bad groin, Jagr led the eighth-seeded Penguins over the top-seeded Devils at a moment when the franchise was in bankrupt and badly in need of further revenue.

The Penguins have been blessed over the last 40 years with the very best run of offensive players imaginable. Jagr was the bridge from Mario Lemieux, to — well in a perfect world it would have been Sidney Crosby — but Lemieux came back in 2001 and Jagr left, so Jags was in essence the bridge back to Lemieux.

But Jagr still carried the weight of the franchise during some of its most precarious moments, in the right spot at the right time yet again.

The next and maybe the last thing that Jagr will change is the current informal policy of the Penguins for jersey retirements.

The standard to get a jersey retired in Pittsburgh has been impossibly tough, which makes the occasion all the more special. The Penguins have retired two numbers in 56 years; once in memory of Michel Briere, a promising young life cut short in an off-ice accident. And then for Mario Lemieux. Until now, those two circumstances have been the only path to get a number hung in the rafters above the ice in the Pens’ arena.

Fittingly, the barrier-breaking and habitual line-stepper of Jaromir Jagr will be the one tread into the new territory one more time for the Penguins when his 68 is memorialized forever in franchise lore at tomorrow’s jersey retirement.

With the ice broken for jersey retirements, surely No. 87 will be joining 21, 66, and 68 one day. 71 is on deck too. 58 or 29? The idea is more plausible now than it was a year ago.

But tomorrow won’t be about the future for others; it will rightfully be about the memories that Jagr created. Jagr had a nomadic second act of his career that took him took eight other NHL teams as well as a stint in the Russian KHL league; but the 68, the flowing mullet, the dazzling skill are identifiable to his 11 years in Pittsburgh.

Tomorrow will be a celebration of all of that, long overdue but Jagr is a guy who does what he wants in the time he wants — just ask the Hockey Hall of Fame, who can’t induct him for three years until he stops playing pro, which he occasionally still does for the Kladno team he owns, including 15 games this season.

It’s a reunion that always needed to happen and surely will be an emotional homecoming. The player who gave so much to the Pens organization will finally be honored in the fashion he deserved. As always, Jagr’s sense of timing and doing things his own way will be on display.