PITTSBURGH — Jaromir Jagr can’t stop making surprising news.
A few days after appearing to subtly announce his impending retirement from professional hockey, he won a Mid-Atlantic Regional Emmy for the program “Celebrate 68: Jagr Retirement Ceremony,” for which he was credited as a producer/writer.
Jagr was credited as part of a 12-person Pittsburgh Penguins team that won in the Live Sports Program category Saturday night.
The program aired on SportsNet Pittsburgh and chronicled the retirement of Jagr’s No. 68 at PPG Paints Arena in February. Jagr, who spent his first 11 and most famous NHL seasons with the Penguins, had a homecoming of sorts for the event, as he and the team had had a somewhat strained relationship for the previous two decades.
“Jagr wins an Emmy,” said Penguins president Kevin Acklin on Sunday. “You can’t write this stuff.”
Acklin played a pivotal role in helping reunite Jagr with the Penguins, as did Jagr’s former teammates, current team broadcaster Phil Bourque and retired longtime vice president of communications Tom McMillan.
It was McMillan who first raised the issue of retiring Jagr’s number with former majority co-owner Mario Lemieux last decade. He later asked Bourque to make the case to Jagr during Bourque’s trip with his wife to Czechia at the beginning of the decade.
“That’s when you could see the ice beginning to thaw with him,” Bourque said of Jagr, who had been estranged from the Penguins since his trade request was granted after the 2000-01 season.
“I think he had to hear it from someone he knew, ‘Jags, they want to love you.’ He thought Penguins fans hated him because they booed him after the trade. I had to tell him, ‘Buddy, they did that because they love you; they were hurting, too.’”
Lemieux, Jagr’s boyhood idol and predecessor as the NHL’s best scorer in the 1990s, always wanted No. 68 next to his No. 66 in Pittsburgh. Complicating that inevitability was Jagr’s hyped return to the NHL in 2011 when he chose an offer from the Philadelphia Flyers despite interest from the Penguins — and also Jagr’s inability to make the timing work when he finally stopped playing in the league.
As recently as summer 2023, Jagr was unsure if he could make a retirement ceremony in Pittsburgh work because of his commitments to HC Rytíři Kladno, Jagr’s hometown team that he also owns in Czechia.
While in Pittsburgh for an autograph signing last summer, Jagr toured the Penguins offices and met with Acklin. They formed a quick friendship, which Acklin said helped Jagr trust that a jersey retirement would be a “great thing for everybody.”
Fenway Sports Group, which owns the Penguins, covered costs for Jagr, his girlfriend, his mother, other family members and a documentary crew for what became a week in Pittsburgh this past winter. That included a private meal with Lemieux, Bourque and other guests — teammates of Jagr’s during his Penguins tenure (1990-2001) — at a popular Pittsburgh Italian restaurant and an event at Rivers Casino.
Jagr practiced with last season’s Penguins team the day before his jersey retirement, spending time with his heirs as franchise icons, Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin — the latter of whom considered Jagr one of his idols while growing up a hockey fan in Russia.
After an emotional ceremony on Feb. 18, in which Jagr addressed a sellout crowd in English while surrounded by teammates and family, Jagr took part in the pregame warmup skate with Penguins players who donned his No. 68 jersey and wore long-haired wigs in his honor. Before that, he, Lemieux, Crosby and Malkin — a foursome that featured heavily in the Penguins’ five Stanley Cup wins and also combined to win the franchise’s 15 Art Ross Trophies — posed for a photo shoot.
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The Penguins are currently considering multiple plans to honor their legacy, including as individual players. But Crosby’s No. 87 and Malkin’s No. 71 will join Lemieux, Jagr and the late Michel Brière in receiving the high honor of jersey retirement.
Jagr’s reunion with the Penguins not only healed all old wounds, but it also eased strains between Lemieux and FSG. Lemieux’s friendship with Jagr, whom he mentored in the early 1990s, influenced him to return to PPG Paints Arena — a rarity since FSG purchased the Penguins during the 2021-22 season.
Jagr’s legendary status in Pittsburgh grew a few weeks later when a shipment of his bobbleheads was stolen in California. A multi-week saga eventually ended with the return of the bobbleheads, but not before bringing national attention to the theft and Jagr’s Paul Bunyan-like status in Pittsburgh.
With Lemieux no longer prominently within the franchise, though he does retain a small ownership stake, Acklin is hopeful Jagr will join the Penguins in some capacity — perhaps as a global ambassador, as Jagr intends to remain in Czechia. Acklin and Jagr have had conversations about a role in general terms, but nothing specific, Acklin said.
First, Jagr needed to stop playing.
That will apparently happen at the end of the current Czech Extraliga season.
Jagr, 52, said by phone Thursday that he intends to retire after the season. In a Czech-language Instagram post on Tuesday, Jagr referred to his “last season.”
Given Jagr’s infamous willingness to change his mind on all matters, even Malkin was skeptical that the retirement would happen as planned.
“Do you believe him?” Malkin told The Athletic on Thursday. “I think he, like, play forever.”
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When Jagr does return to Pittsburgh, an Emmy statue will be waiting for him. Unless the Penguins chance shipping the statue to him — perhaps an unwise move after what happened to the bobbleheads earlier this year.
This Emmy is Jagr’s first. The Penguins won two other Emmys on Saturday night, for Post-Produced Or Edited Sports Program (“In The Room — Consistency Of Success”) and Editor (Sydney Bauer).
Required reading
(Photo: Justin Berl / Getty Images)
