Jaromir Jagr -- Should We Miss Him?

The Jags situation was a difficult one, wasn’t it? Here we had a guy who had blossomed as a leader in New York and who had actually seemed to enjoy being a senior spokesman on a youthful team. He enjoyed taking guys under his wing and being the one to talk the boys up to the media. Of course, his monster ’05-’06 season was nice, too.

I was never a huge Jagr fan. When he came to New York, I couldn’t shake the images of him dogging it in Washington and practically admitting it during an on-ice All-Star Game interview. But he lit it up in New York, the fans loved him and even I eventually came around. The guy really seemed to want to win badly. Maybe he wanted to win the same way Kobe Bryant wants to win – without the guy who was always attached to him and his titles (Mario for Jags, Shaq for Kobe, in case you live under a rock). It sure looked that way because he seemed driven to me.

Sure, there were still the weird, occasional Jagr-isms, like asking out of the shootout Top 3 because he didn’t like breakaways and felt he wasn't good at it. But all in all, we all came around on Jags. He embraced being the captain and led the team admirably. Nobody wearing the C following Mark Messier had an easy job and I’m not sure anybody could have done it better. Brian Leetch, long a favorite of mine and all Ranger fans, certainly couldn’t handle it.

And now he’s gone. Jagr wanted to stay, but only half-heartedly it seemed. He wasn’t going to get a big, final NHL contract from the Rangers – largely due to the salary cap – and he knew it. He also knew, after one of his worst statistical seasons ever, that he wasn’t a hot ticket in the NHL at all anymore. And while I’m sure somebody would have paid him well enough, the lure of going back to Omsk proved too much. (I really can’t believe I just wrote about the lure of Avangard Omsk.)

It’s hard to fathom anyone wanting to live and work in Russia over New York City. But none of us are in Jagr’s head, where who knows what goes on. This is a foreign land for him and he’s taken a lot of arrows from the media and various fans here. In Omsk, where he played during the lockout, he was revered and treated like a conquering hero – which he probably deserves.

Jaromir Jagr won two Stanley Cups and gave his all during other playoff runs, especially with the Rangers. I'll always be convinced that his shoulder was never close to right again after he injured it taking a swipe at Gomez in the 2006 playoffs. And yet he never complained about it and pushed through, doing his best. My respect has grown for him during his time in Ranger blue and I have to say I’ll miss him and I think the team will miss him.