The 1998-99 NHL season was famous for being the final year in Wayne Gretzky’s incredible career, but star forward Jaromir Jagr made headlines when he was named The Hockey News’ player of the year.
In this major feature story from The Hockey News’ May 7, 1999 edition (Vol. 52, Issue 34), veteran contributor Joe Starkey wrote about Jagr’s amazing season playing for the Pittsburgh Penguins.
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Jagr posted 83 assists and 127 points in 1998-99, further cementing his status as a legitimate Hart Trophy front-runner. That impressed even Jagr’s fellow superstars.
“Just look at the numbers, what he has meant to their club, and it has been pretty scary,” Boston Bruins defenseman Ray Bourque said of Jagr.
Astonishingly, Jagr still has played competitive hockey into 2024. He’s a clear-cut first-ballot Hockey Hall of Famer, and even a quarter-century ago, it was clear how special Jagr truly was.
“There are so many great players in this league, so many great players that he exceeded,” Pens winger Rob Brown said of Jagr. “He stood above everyone else. He needs nobody.”
JAGR PUT TOGETHER SEASON FOR THE AGES
Vol. 52, No. 34, May 7, 1999
By Joe Starkey
Before digesting why Jaromir Jagr has been named The Hockey News’ Player of the Year, flash back to September.
The Pittsburgh Penguins, you might recall, were being picked by plenty of observers to miss the playoffs for the first time in Jagr’s nine-year career, and this was a month before the franchise declared bankruptcy. Imagine if those same forecasters had known goaltender Tom Barrasso – the team’s only other star player – would miss nearly half the season because of injuries.
Many people also figured Jagr would struggle without longtime linemate Ron Francis, who set up more of Jagr’s goals (110) than any other player. And, finally, remember Jagr was being asked to follow Mario Lemieux and the stately Francis as team captain, a prospect that drew widespread skepticism.
Now flash forward to April 18, the end of the regular season. Look at the Penguins. They had long since clinched a playoff spot. They had been fighting for one of the top seeds in the Eastern Conference before a ridiculous rash of injuries robbed them of Barrasso and top defenseman Kevin Hatcher for most of March and part of April. Hard-hitting defenseman Darius Kasparaitis was lost for the season with a knee injury in early March.
Look at Jagr. He was winning his third scoring title in the past five seasons and he won by the largest margin since 1990-91, when Wayne Gretzky beat out Brett Hull by 32 points. Jagr finished with 127 points, 20 more than Teemu Selanne of the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. Heck, Jagr would have led 20 of the league’s other 26 teams in scoring by virtue of his assists alone.
“Just look at the numbers, what he has meant to their club and it has been pretty scary,” said Boston Bruins’ defenseman Ray Bourque.
One could easily argue that in this era of trap-happy hockey, Jagr’s 127 points rank as one of the remarkable achievements in the sport. Consider teams are averaging 5.3 goals combined. When Gretzky cranked out 212 points in 1981-82, teams were averaging 8.3 goals per game. Gretzky’s Oilers averaged 5.2 by themselves.
The season Gretzky scored 212 points, he had a share in 50.8 per cent of the Oilers’ goals. Jagr was part of 52.5 per cent of his team’s goals this season. In the 10 seasons Gretzky led the NHL in scoring, he never had a share in more than 51.8 percent of his team’s goals.
What’s more, Jagr, 27, was surviving quite nicely as captain. Sure, he hit a few pockets of turbulence, but he also surprised everyone by lending a sense of stability to one of the league’s most unstable franchises.
He also didn’t have a superstar next to him. This wasn’t like Paul Kariya with Selanne, or Eric Lindros with John LeClair.
“There are so many great players in this league, so many great players that he exceeded,” said Penguins’ winger Rob Brown. “He stood above everyone else. He needs nobody.”
Yet so many people need him. Not a skater in the league can match Jagr in terms of making players around him better. For a good part of the season, his linemates were rookie center Jan Hrdina and journeyman winger Kip Miller.
Thanks largely to Jagr, Hrdina is a Calder Trophy candidate and Miller has become a dangerous NHL scorer. Miller entered this season with 14 goals in 90 NHL games. He scored 11 in his first 12 games next to Jagr.
When Hrdina wasn’t centering for Jagr, Martin Straka was – and Straka scored a career-high 35 goals. He was the Penguins’ second-highest scorer with 83 points. There was no other team with as wide a gap (44 points) between its No. 1 and No. 2 scorers.
Francis, by the way, finished the season with 52 points in 82 games. That was the lowest point total of his 18-year career. That wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that a certain, curly-haired winger was no longer skating to his right would it?
And Jagr did it all with opponents hanging on him like clingy kids on their father. As the focal point of every team’s defensive game plan, he took a hellacious, seven-month beating. Yet he missed only one game and led all NHL forwards in ice time at roughly 25.5 minutes per game. He was a model of consistency, producing at least a point in 64 of the 81 games he played. His longest pointless streak was two games, which happened three times.
Clearly, no other skater is close to Jagr in the player-of-the-year race. Some might argue a goaltender – perhaps Dominik Hasek of the Buffalo Sabres – could be considered as valuable to his team. But how could one possibly differentiate between, say, Jagr and Hasek, in terms of their worth? The Sabres and Penguins finished a point apart. Both likely would have missed the playoffs without their superstar.
Maybe the fact Hasek missed 13 games because of injuries should be enough to tip the scales in favor of Jagr. “Hasek missed a lot of time this year – and that was the difference,” Bourque said.
It should also be considered that while Jagr ran away with the scoring race, Hasek did not have the best goals-against average in the NHL. He didn’t lead the league in shutouts, or come close in victories.
A Jagr-Hasek duel midway through the season could serve as a symbol for the player-of-the-year race. The game took place Feb. 2 at the Civic Arena. The Penguins had blown a lead and were trailing 3-2 in the third period when Jagr – the kid who couldn’t speak English when he first arrived in the United States – stood up on the bench and yelled, “We’re not losing!” Then he assisted on two goals and scored one to spark a 5-3 victory.
“When he said that,” Miller said, “we knew we were going to win.”
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