Jaromir Jagr’s jersey will go up on the roof of the Pittsburgh Penguins’ home arena early Monday Finnish time. Jussi Jokinen played with Jagr in the last years of this NHL career.
Hill jumping and ice hockey are moving forward at a fast pace, but the two who turn 52 years old this year still manage to push themselves. Noriaki Kasai and Jaromir Jagr.
Both are in the spotlight this weekend. Kasai made history in the world cup in pole vaulting on Saturday.
Jagr’s jersey will be raised in the NHL on the night between Sunday and Monday Finnish time, even though his career will continue.
The Pittsburgh Penguins will retire the game number 68 of the Czech puck expert. The ceremony will be seen before the match against the Los Angeles Kings.
Jagr plays in the Czech main league
Jagr is still playing ice hockey at a high level, even though he turned 52 on Thursday. This season in the Czech league, there have been 0+4 performances in 15 matches. He returned to the rink in December and immediately made an impact on the Kladno team. Jagria was incensed in abundance fresh.
Over the years, Jagr has told openly in the media how he is forced to play ice hockey.
– Do you know why I still play? I have responsibility for this team. Otherwise I wouldn’t make a laughing stock of myself. But if I quit, the partners and sponsors will leave, and this team would be gone, Jagr commented in the spring of 2021 to the Czech media.
The TÅ¡ek legend is the club owner of Kladno. His father was the president of the club for a long time.
– As long as my father breathes, this team is my responsibility. He supported the club for 20 years. I would be ashamed if I left, Jagr also stated in the same interview.
Jussi Jokinen played with Jaromir Jagr when the Czech legend played his last full season in the NHL in Florida. Jagr is the NHL’s second-highest scorer of all time.
Someone believes that a sense of duty towards his home club is one of the reasons for Jagr’s long career. He also sees passion for ice hockey as another reason.
– Jagr loves ice hockey in the same way that most parents love their own children. Ice hockey is the greatest love of his life, Jokinen describes.
The wild exercise remained in my mind
There have been wild stories about the TÅ¡ekki icon over the years. He is known to have trained like an animal.
According to Jokinen, Jagr used to go skating alone in the hall late at night. The Finnish teammate got to witness all kinds of strange training methods up close.
The use of additional weights is especially memorable to Joki. Jagr could strap a five-pound weight to the shoulder of his hockey stick. There were also extra weights attached to the ankles sometimes.
– He tried to get more strength in his wrists and hands with the weight of the club on the stage. With the ankle weights, he was probably trying to make it feel lighter in the games, when it has been heavier with the weights in training, Jokinen describes.
Jokinen is 12 years younger than Jagr. When he was a teenager himself, Jagr was the biggest role model for a young ice hockey player from Kalajoki.
– Jagr has played so long that he was 42–44 years old when I was in the same team with him. It is inconceivable that he can be at the absolute top in a physical sport like hockey, Jokinen muses and compares himself.
– When I quit myself at the age of 38, my body was already a little like this and that. I had to make compromises in my training. Now Jagr is in his fifties and he needs to get his body in such condition that he can play in the TÅ¡ek league games. After all, it’s an unfathomable thing.
Also, the ice hockey league published highlights of Jaromir Jagr’s games earlier this season in X in honor of the ice hockey prodigy’s birthday.