#12 - Jaromir Jagr

Jaromir Jagr (Murillo Pyramid Rank = #12)

Adjusted Stats

1990-1991   Pit*         82 GP   25 goals   27 assists   52 points   0.63 PPG
1991-1992   Pit*         72 GP   29 goals   34 assists   63 points   0.87 PPG
1992-1993   Pit           79 GP   28 goals   50 assists   78 points   0.98 PPG
1993-1994   Pit           78 GP   30 goals   62 assists   92 points   1.17 PPG
1994-1995   Pit           82 GP   56 goals   67 assists   123 points 1.50 PPG
1995-1996   Pit           82 GP   61 goals   85 assists   146 points 1.78 PPG
1996-1997   Pit           63 GP   50 goals   51 assists   100 points 1.59 PPG
1997-1998   Pit           77 GP   41 goals   78 assists   119 points 1.54 PPG
1998-1999   Pit           81 GP   51 goals   97 assists   148 points 1.83 PPG
1999-2000   Pit           63 GP   47 goals   60 assists   107 points 1.71 PPG
2000-2001   Pit           81 GP   58 goals   77 assists   135 points 1.67 PPG
2001-2002   Wsh        69 GP   36 goals   56 assists   93 points   1.34 PPG
2002-2003   Wsh        75 GP   42 goals   47 assists   89 points   1.19 PPG
2003-2004   Wsh/NYR 77 GP 37 goals   51 assists   89 points   1.15 PPG
2005-2006   NYR       82 GP   55 goals   70 assists   125 points 1.52 PPG
2006-2007   NYR       82 GP   32 goals   70 assists   103 points 1.25 PPG
2007-2008   NYR       82 GP   28 goals   52 assists   80 points   0.98 PPG

Adjusted Playoff Stats

1990-1991   Pit*         24 GP     3 goals    9 assists     11 points   0.46 PPG
1991-1992   Pit*         21 GP     10 goals  11 assists   21 points   1.00 PPG
1992-1993   Pit           12 GP     4 goals    3 assists     7 points     0.62 PPG
1993-1994   Pit           6 GP       2 goals    4 assists     6 points     0.98 PPG
1994-1995   Pit           12 GP     9 goals    4 assists     13 points   1.10 PPG
1995-1996   Pit           18 GP     11 goals  11 assists   22 points   1.22 PPG
1996-1997   Pit           5 GP       4 goals    4 assists     8 points     1.68 PPG
1997-1998   Pit           6 GP       4 goals    6 assists     10 points   1.67 PPG
1998-1999   Pit           9 GP       5 goals    8 assists     13 points   1.46 PPG
1999-2000   Pit           11 GP     10 goals  10 assists   19 points   1.75 PPG
2000-2001   Pit           16 GP     2 goals    12 assists   14 points   0.88 PPG
2002-2003   Wsh        6 GP       2 goals    6 assists     8 points     1.39 PPG
2005-2006   NYR       3 GP       0 goals    1 assists     1 point      0.33 PPG
2006-2007   NYR       10 GP     6 goals    7 assists     12 points   1.25 PPG
2007-2008   NYR       10 GP     5 goals    10 assists   16 points   1.57 PPG

Career - 1307 GP, 706 goals, 1034 assists, 1742 points, 1.33 PPG
Career-Highs - 61 goals (95-96); 97 assists (98-99); 148 points (98-99); 1.83 PPG (98-99)
Avg. (17 seasons) - 77 GP, 42 goals, 61 assists, 102 points, 1.33 PPG
Peak Avg. (94-02) - 75 GP, 50 goals, 71 assists, 121 points, 1.62 PPG, 0 Cups

Playoff Career - 169 GP, 77 goals, 106 assists, 181 points, 1.07 PPG
Playoff-Highs - 11 goals (95-96); 12 assists (00-01); 22 points (95-96); 1.75 PPG (99-00)

Accolades - 1 MVP award, 5 Art Ross
All-Star Teams - 7-time 1st-team, 1-time 2nd-team
2-time Stanley Cup Champion


There is a case to be made that, aside from the Pantheon names of Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr and Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr is the best offensive player ever to play in the NHL. This surprises many, but the facts are too numerous to ignore:


- His 1,742 career adjusted points rank him fifth behind just Wayne Gretzky, Gordie Howe, Mark Messier and Ron Francis. For the record, Messier and Francis each played about 500 more games than Jagr. If Jagr averaged 10 points a season for just three more seasons, a scorching Tie Domi pace, he's ahead of them.
- His average of 102 adjusted points per season played is second only to The Great One...and along with Gretzky, he's the only player to average over 100 points a season. This of course means that Jagr holds the highest average of any non-center.
- His peak average of 121 points per season ranks third, behind just Gretzky and Esposito; and his peak-average PPG ranks third behind just Gretzky and Lemieux.
- He won the Art Ross Trophy five times as the league's leading scorer.

Jagr benefits from the adjusted-stats more than most players, because the fact is that his prime, when he was tearing up the league, occurred from 1994-2002, at the peak of the Trap Era, when players with 80 points in a season would routinely crack the top ten and even the top five. It also didn't help Jagr and his fellow forwards that the Trap Era also boasted the best era of goaltending we've seen (Roy, Brodeur, Belfour, Hasek and Joseph were all at their best during these years). In spite of all this, Jagr managed to put up remarkable numbers.

By objective criteria, Jagr is clearly in the top twenty players of all-time, and perhaps deserves consideration for the top ten (he's outside my top ten, but still within the 11-15 range...and ahead of Messier in my eyes, which shocks many). Among right-wingers, Howe clearly bests him, as does Richard for his legendary status and fierce competitiveness. Lafleur's peak was equal to Jagr's, but unlike Jagr, Lafleur fell off the map after his peak.

So the case has been made, and yet...and yet...there is something about Jagr that, particularly among Canadians, doesn't seem to qualify him for the discussion of the greatest players of all time. Part of it may be the fact that, although Jagr won two Stanley Cups, they were at the beginning of his career, and they were certainly far more the product of Lemieux's dominance. No one who saw the Cup finals against Chicago can doubt that Jagr was also integral to their championship.

(By the way, in case you've forgotten: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6u1f1F5xAU)

Still, while Jagr was at his peak, as the best player in the league (or perhaps second-best, to Peter Forsberg), he never led the Penguins to a Cup championship. And then there was the fact that he seemed to quit on the team during the 2001 Conference Finals against the Devils...remember him skating off before the period was over?

This gets at the heart of a prejudice many Canadians have about European players: that they don't fully compete at all times. Certainly, there may be truth to this, and Jagr was known for being erratic and mercurial (his career playoff PPG, while still excellent, is a full quarter-PPG lower than his regular season output), but we shouldn't let this blanket assessment tarnish Jagr's accomplishments. I still vividly remember the 7th-seeded Penguins upsetting the heavily-favoured Devils in the 1999 quarterfinals, in which Jagr took the team on his back and led a bunch of ragtags far past where they deserved to be. The reality is, the Penguins simply weren't very good when Jagr was in his prime, and yet he led them to the playoffs over and over again, and many times past the first round. Just look at the Penguins' immediate dropoff after Jagr left to go to Washington...they languished as one of the worst teams in the league (although that paid off in the form of Fleury, Crosby and Malkin).

There was also no doubt that Jagr's game wasn't as well-rounded as, say, Peter Forsberg's...but as with the Gretzky argument, I'll grant that although Jagr was a bit of a cherry-picker, his philosophy was certainly that "the best defence is a good offence". And considering that Jagr's career +/- is +275 (on Penguins teams that featured goalies like Ken Wreggat and a past-his-prime Tom Barrasso), it's clear that Jagr succeeded in keeping the puck out of his own net simply by virtue of the fact that he had it on his stick most of the time.

As for the much-maligned days with the Capitals, there's no doubt that Jagr wasn't as productive or consistent as he was with the Penguins, but it's not like he fell off the map into some Alexei Kovalev-like level of ineptitude. Jagr was still top five in the league in scoring in his first year, and averaged around 90 adjusted points with the Capitals. Not dominant, to be sure, but not bad for a "dip" in his career.

For anyone else who doubts Jagr's commitment to team success, just look at the dominance the Czech Republic displayed on the international scene from 1998-2001. In Nagano, we Canadians had our hearts broken by Hasek, but we shouldn't forget that Jagr was one of the top forwards of the tournament. Basically, the Czech team was Hasek, Jagr, a bunch of players with potential (Straka, Elias), and some scrubs. That's it...unless you count Jiri Slegr, who played way over his head and won top defenceman honours in Nagano.

Jagr cemented his legacy with three excellent seasons with the New York Rangers, in which he led a team that had been languishing out of the playoffs for years back to the Eastern Conference semifinals two years in a row. If not for an astonishing spurt by Joe Thornton after his trade to San Jose, Jagr would have won another scoring title and another MVP award (as a side note, it's interesting that Jagr has one MVP award to his name, but has received three Ted Lindsay awards as the most valuable player as voted by the league's players. Could that be a result of European prejudice among those who do the Hart trophy voting?)

So we can throw backhanded compliments Jagr's way, such as "he was a great individual talent" or "an extremely gifted player", but let's just take a step back and acknowledge him for what he is: one of the best players to ever play right-wing.