Jaromir Jagr is back in the NHL and he’ll be playing his home games in the state of Pennsylvania once again, but not in Pittsburgh. The Flyers and GM Paul Holmgren locked up Jagr to a one-year deal to join the team. After an overactive last week that saw the Flyers deal off star centers Jeff Carter and Mike Richards, it’ll be a future Hall of Famer in Jagr that comes in to try and help bring the Flyers to the Stanley Cup.
The wild part about Jagr’s deal is that it’s worth $3.3 million for the year. After being away from the NHL for the past three years playing in the KHL with Avangard Omsk, Jagr decided it was time to come back to North America and make a run at the Cup once again. After being courted heavily by Pittsburgh and Detroit only to see them pull back their offers before free agency got under way this afternoon, Jagr was left to sort through a reported host of other offers.
Jagr won’t be the dynamic superstar that he was while he played with the Penguins in the 1990s but with the depth the Flyers have, he’ll be able to make his place on the power play and be able to pick his moments playing with the likes of Claude Giroux and Daniel Briere. Jagr at this point in his career is a purely offensive player and playing under coach Peter Laviolette he’ll get the freedom to do what he has to do to score.
Seeing Jagr in Flyers orange and black will be a stunning sight and given how things went in negotiations with the Penguins, all Flyers-Pens games are going to be must-see games. Making things all the more interesting is that the Flyers will be taking part in the Winter Classic and that means being on HBO’s 24/7. You’ll probably want to be dialed in for when the Flyers make their first appearance in Pittsburgh on December 29. We’ll just set the DVR right now for that one.