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So the Jaromir Jagr era is over, after 17 years, two Stanley Cups, five scoring championships and a first-ballot entry to the Hockey Hall of Fame. After weeks of trying and spectacularly failing to bring home one of its homegrown products, Russia's newly hatched Continental Hockey League finally poached a marquee name from the NHL.
Jagr, who played for Avangard Omsk during the NHL lockout and developed a strong following in the Siberian city, signed a two-year contract, worth about $7-million (U.S.) a season, including bonuses, with a team and player option for a third season. Three NHL teams made firm contract offers to Jagr and one, the Edmonton Oilers, actually offered more than Omsk did — $8-million on a one-year term.
However, Jagr, 36, wanted a multiyear deal to stay in the NHL and no team was prepared to offer him that. Under the labour agreement, if a player over the age of 35 signs a multiyear contract with a team, it counts against the salary cap for the full term no matter what — even if he retires, gets hurt, or, as TSN analyst Bob McKenzie colourfully put it, gets abducted by aliens. It's why Mats Sundin and Joe Sakic and the rest of the NHL's aging stars generally sign contracts on a year-by-year basis — to protect the clubs they play for.
Financially, Omsk's deal is attractive because, under Russian tax law, players pay virtually no tax themselves, meaning a $7-million contract means $7-million in Jagr's pocket. To get that much, net, in the NHL, Jagr would need to sign an NHL deal worth between $10-million and $12-million a season, depending upon the tax laws in the state or province in which he plays.
New York Rangers right wing Jaromir Jagr looks to pass during the second period of an NHL hockey game in New York on Jan. 22. (Frank Franklin II/AP)
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Jagr's contract was finalized about 3 a.m. yesterday morning by his agent, Pat Brisson, after complicated negotiations in trying to hammer out the details of the agreement in two languages.
Jagr's addition represents a coup for Omsk, a team owned by Roman Abramovich, the oligarch who also owns Chelsea in the English premiership.
Jagr's addition does represent a fall-back position for the Continental League, after they failed to coax one of the premier young Russian players, the Pittsburgh Penguins' Evgeni Malkin, with an offer that would have netted him about $8-million a season tax-free.
Instead, Malkin signed a five-year, $43.5-million extension with the Penguins last Wednesday, identical to the contract Sidney Crosby received from the NHL team.
Nor does it appear the Continental League will be a viable threat for in-their-prime NHL talent in the near term. The two Russian players selected in the first round of the NHL entry draft two weeks ago — Nikita Filatov by the Columbus Blue Jackets and Viktor Tikhonov by the Phoenix Coyotes — were both adamant that their first choice was to play in the NHL next season, not in Russia.
Two other prominent Russians, Alex Ovechkin, the reigning scoring champion and most valuable player, and Pavel Datsyuk, the Selke and Lady Byng award winner, are both signed to long-term NHL contracts and have repeatedly dismissed Russia as an option.
Thus far, most of the players recruited to play in the Russian league, which replaces the former Superleague beginning next season, were those having a difficult time getting NHL contracts — from former Senators' problem child Alexei Yashin, who bolted two years ago, to the suspension-prone Chris Simon. Since last Tuesday, eight NHL teams changed either their starting or backup goaltender, but when ex-Senator Ray Emery failed to land a job in that massive shuffle, his agents turned to Moscow, seeking to place him there.
Discussing the threat posed by the Continental League to the NHL, Datsyuk's boss in Detroit, general manager Ken Holland, said in an interview at the draft that it would "be good for the fringe player or the really good minor-leaguer and give them an opportunity to go and make some money."
Holland, also believed: "Anybody with any competitive juices wants to play with and against the best players in the world, in the best league in the world. And it [the NHL] is an established league.
"These other leagues, maybe 10 years from now, after they've got their footing, it may be different. But right now, this is the best league in the world. Why wouldn't you want to be involved in the best league in the world?"
Within the past four years, there has been a massive building boom in Russia, improving the crumbling infrastructure of the Soviet-era arenas, but most of them seat only 8,000 to 10,000 spectators, with limited luxury seating. Ticket prices, according to Dave King, who coached Metallurg Magnitogorsk in Malkin's last season in Russia, 2005-06, were a fraction of NHL prices — about $5 each.
Unlike the NHL, which is a gate-receipt-driven business, the 24 teams in the Continental League are generally run at a loss by wealthy owners, interested more in wins and championships than turning a profit. Jagr's contract could, in some ways, be compared to the $1-million that the Winnipeg Jets of the World Hockey Association gave Bobby Hull in 1972. He adds a box-office attraction to a league that represents little immediate threat to the NHL but, like the WHA, will require monitoring in the months and years to come.
