Somewhere, Mario Lemieux is punching himself in the dick. This must be so difficult for him– watching as his former mate brushes off his gnat of a star.
I truly don’t know what has happened to Jaromir Jagr over the last few weeks. He was quickly embraced by Flyers fans this season, but, other than The Jaromir Jagr Hockey School, there wasn’t one story that stood out, and Jags didn’t do anything extraordinary in terms of marketing himself (like, say, Scott Hartnell, Hunter Pence or Shane Victorino, all of whom are very active on Twitter and hardly camera shy).
Something changed last week (for the better, of course).
Jagr joined Twitter and Facebook. Playfully taunted Ilya Bryzgalov with a “beeaaaars” chant during a post-game media scrum. Fired out one of the most genuinely funny Tweets you will see. Randomly popped up in a promotional video, flexing for Hartnell and Claude Giroux. And he writes his own blog for some Czech website.
While he doesn’t give us a ton of quotable material, his blog is certainly more insightful and lengthier than what his younger teammates are doing for the Flyers’ website and Philly.com. One item of note is Jagr’s take of the antics of Sidney Crosby. Hint: he doesn't have one.
There is a lot of talk now about Sidney Crosby and what he’s been doing on the ice. Some give it a lot of thought, others less. And I am a guy who does not care at all, I take no notice. He does harm only to himself. But every man is different, perhaps this helps him get into the game and play better.
But I don’t want to add any more comments; I really take no notice of it. In fact, when on the ice, I hardly know something like this is going on. I really want to focus on my game, to be as useful as possible to my team.
And that he swept Voras’ (Jakub Voráček’s) glove away with his stick? Well, it’s no big deal; one can pick it up a few yards further on… Sure, I understand there are people who take it differently, which is right. This is what the team is about. Every player is different, every team needs someone with a cool head to calm things down, but also players with an emotional attitude.
If everyone were like me, the team would get roughed up and beaten by others all the time; on the other hand, if all of us were short-fused, we would spend most of our game time inside the penalty box rather than on the ice. So this is what the team is about.
Personally, I don’t care about the “Crosby issue”. I even don’t know what newspapers have written about it. I believe we shouldn’t care; we should stick to our game and try to maintain the same excellent team spirit we have enjoyed throughout the regular season. There is no point in changing anything.
In effect, Jagr couldn’t care less that Crosby dislikes every. single. Flyer. He’s too busy scoring goals and tweeting about beautiful naked women. Plus he touches on a really interesting point: teams succeed because different players have different roles. Zac Rinaldo and Scott Hartnell stir the pot (Hartnell scores, too). Sean Couturier purchases the manhood of Evgeni Malkin. Giroux dangles. It all balances out. Unlike the Penguins, who have 20 goons of varying skills levels who start shit all over the ice and get so incredibly sidetracked talking about how much they hate the other team that they almost can’t recognize the fact that they’re down 3-0 and about to be sent back to their cribs for the summer. Oh wells.
