Jaromir Jagr is often described as the ageless wonder of the National Hockey League. And with good reason: three weeks away from his 44th birthday, he leads the upstart Florida Panthers in both goals and points.
But having watched Panthers games for a few weeks now, I think his age is beginning to show.
He still has the trunk, the lungs and the savvy to compete nightly but it is the wrists that appear to be wearing thin, just as happened with the man who embodies NHL longevity even more than Jagr.
There have been a number of recent instances in which Jagr seemed to lack wrist strength in recent games.
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In Monday night’s loss to Edmonton Oilers, Jagr had the puck in the offensive zone. He tried to use his body to shield his stick and the puck from the Oilers defender Brandon Davidson, who was not even born when Jagr began his NHL career.
Davidson reached around and swatted away Jagr’s stick like it was a toothpick. Edmonton gained possession because of Jagr’s giveaway.
This is not a rarity. According to sportingcharts.com, Jagr’s 20 giveaways are exceeded among Panther forwards only by the youngster Jonathan Huberdeau, who has 25.
Last Sunday against the Tampa Bay Lightning, Jagr had two chances to redirect shots towards the net but both times could only send the puck wide. The second of the two efforts especially seemed to lack power.
During an earlier game against Edmonton, on January 10, he uncharacteristically lost control of the puck while on a breakaway. Luckily for the Panthers, the puck bounced off the gear of the Oilers goalie Cam Talbot and into the net.
Just watching Jagr, something seems not quite right. While he retains a poacher’s instincts and is a sharp passer, when he has the puck he is using his body to keep defenders away from his stick side.
This is not an uncommon tactic, but Jagr seems more reliant on it than most players.
Maybe this is temporary. Or maybe it is just a string of bad luck. But 26 seasons of opponents’ slashes to the wrists must surely have taken a toll on Jagr, as such handiwork had done to the great Gordie Howe when he retired in 1980 after 32 seasons.
“I was slashed on the wrists so many times over the years that the bones there were basically reduced to fragments,” Howe wrote in his autobiography, “Mr Hockey”.
“Toward the end of my NHL career, my wrists played a central role in my decision to retire. I was having trouble even gripping the stick with both hands, which basically turned me into a one-handed player.”
Jagr is not that far gone. But inevitably time is beginning to fray his game.
Yet here’s the thing. Jagr does not need to attain his goal of playing till age 50 to burnish his legend. He could do as much with a deep play-off run that could send him off on a high note.
And this is a reasonable expectation for the Panthers. They have a dynamite core of young players that could make headway in the post-season as early as next year.
This year is probably too much to hope for, though the signs of an imminent rise are there.
Most obvious was the franchise record 12-game winning streak in December and January that has put the team in first place in its division.
It is the potential of the Florida core four, all of them top-three draft choices, that is most auspicious.
– Erik Gudbranson, defenceman, third overall in the 2010 draft. You might not even notice him many nights, but he blocks shots, plays about 20 minutes a game and is a physical force at 6ft 5in. Though he is no star, Gudbranson is part of the reason Panthers have the third-lowest goals-against average in the league.
– Huberdeau, on the left wing, who was third in the 2011 draft. He was NHL’s rookie of the year for 2012/13. Led the Panthers in scoring last season, but greater things are expected of him as an offensive force in the years ahead. Gave a hint of that with 21 points in 21 games late last season.
– Aleksander Barkov, centre, second overall in 2013 draft. This guy is amazing. He never stops checking at either end of the ice and has skill to burn. The other night against Tampa Bay, he was hemmed in by two Lightning players along the boards – so he passed it backwards through his legs to Huberdeau. It was a dazzling play you had to watch in slow-motion to really grasp.
– Aaron Ekblad, defenceman, first overall in 2014 draft. The league’s rookie of the year last season. Still honing his game – he makes a few too many turnovers – but, like Barkov, he is strong both offensively and defensively. His plus-minus of 17 is tied for second among the league’s defencemen. Ekblad is the fulcrum on which his team turns. He has missed four games with injury, a span which coincides with the team’s recent string of losses after its long win streak. In those four losses, Florida has gone 0 for 12 on the power play without Ekblad to man the point.
Florida plays the Chicago Blackhawks on Friday night. And it is reasonable to compare the two teams. The Blackhawks likewise were built up through top draft choices.
The roster analogy would go: Barkov in the Jonathan Toews role, Huberdeau as Patrick Kane, Ekblad as Duncan Keith and Gudbranson as gravy.
It is no coincidence that the Panthers’ general manager, Dale Tallon, ran the Blackhawks from 2005 to 2009 and maintains a healthy respect for the franchise ahead of Friday’s match.
“We’re certainly not in their class yet, but we’ll give them a good fight,” Tallon said in an interview published in the Chicago Tribune.
“We’re going to build something special down here, and you can see some of that now. We’re doing the same things we did all those years up in Chicago.”
Looking further ahead, it would be sweet indeed if the potential of Florida and the actual of Jagr could meld in time to produce some play-off magic in the future.
rmckenzie@thenational.ae
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