Thoughts on Players—The Ex-Pens who are now Rangers


As has already been stated on this blog, Jaromir Jagr is my all-time favorite hockey player. I grew up watching Jags play, watch him become the best player in the world, and—save for Pens versus Rangers games—I still root for Jags.

Watching Jagr, Straka, and Rozsival, it occurred to me that what I read somewhere (online) is probably right. When it comes to the way Pens fans boo players, really, Rozsival deserves to be booed more than Jagr. Jagr, when a Penguin, won two Stanley Cups, 5 league scoring titles, the Pearson Trophy and Hart Trophy. I mean, seriously, Jagr, in Pittsburgh, for the most part, was a phenomenal player. While Rozsival is hardly a phenomenon, he does appear to have blossomed into a legitimate NHL defenseman (on some nights, that is) in New York. Rozy didn’t typically look the part of legitimate NHL defenseman when a Penguin, so really, if we’re actually booing about performance, well, it makes more sense to boo Rozy.

Rozy aside, however, what struck me about Straka and Jagr was how they were still Straka and Jagr. As a teenager, I rooted for Straka and Jagr quite a bit. I know their schemes, know how they feed off each other, and know how they set up on the power play. I know how well they know each other, know they know each other’s timing—and well, despite the fact they’re both in their mid-thirties, they’re still really, really, really good. And Jagr’s still among the top players in the league and certainly looked the part Saturday night.

Anyhow, dare I say that I knew something bad was going to happen to the Pens when Straka and Jagr were deep in the Pens zone and Gonchar and Melichar were on the ice. Staal had just missed a penalty shot, and it was Jagr and Straka on the ice against two defenseman who, let’s face facts, are not exactly defensive stalwarts. And presto, bam, bam, Jagr scores the game-winning goal. How often had I rooted for that to happen for so many years? How weird was it to be unhappy when one of the game’s best players performed the way you expect one of the game’s best players to perform?

And the thing was, in all honesty, I couldn’t be that unhappy. Sure, would I have preferred that Staal end the game by converting his penalty shot? Or that Malkin would not have hit the post? Of course. And yet, having loved Straka and Jagr for so many years, the end result of losing the game upset me, of course, but somehow the fact that it was two former first round draft picks of the Pens, still playing productively in the NHL more than a decade after they’d been drafted, well—

The Penguins’ day—Staal, Malkin, Crosby—is coming. For one night, I said after the game, "their superstars were better than ours." Granted, with Crosby out, Malkin was the only superstar on the ice for us (Staal’s not close yet), and our guy had the misfortune of hitting the post.

I wanted to say that inexperience lost us the game, but it wasn’t inexperience that made the Pens lose. If Crosby had played, I venture to say the Pens could probably have won that game. The Pens lost because the Rangers had a superstar who played like a superstar when it mattered the most.

The Pens have several of those superstars in waiting, and I’m looking forward to watching them. And even as I left the arena, not happy because the Pens lost, I still felt grateful to Straka and Jagr—not for beating my team now—but for the fact that they had played that same way for my team for so many years.