Former NHL legend reveals timeline for hockey retirement

It’s been over six years since the Flames assigned Jagr to Rytiri Kladno in Czechia, his hometown club, to play out the back half of a one-year deal he signed with Calgary for the 2017-18 season. 

That marked the end of his 24-year, 1,733-game NHL career, but it didn’t signal the end of his days playing at the professional level.

Jagr has been Kladno’s majority owner since 2011. The fifth-overall pick of the Penguins in 1990 played his first two professional seasons with the club in the Czechoslovak top league before being drafted and also took the ice there during NHL lockouts in 1994, 2004-05 and 2012.

But by the time Jagr returned during his age 45 season, Kladno had been demoted from the top-level Czech Extraliga to the country’s second-tier pro league. Since his return, though, Kladno has managed to stay in the Extraliga for five out of the last eight seasons.

Jagr was a force in helping them gain their initial promotion back to the top level, scoring 10 goals in 11 qualification games in 2019 to boost them back to the Extraliga for the 2019-20 campaign.

Now in his 37th season of professional hockey, Jagr is understandably no longer a premier force on the ice. The right-winger was limited to 15 regular-season appearances for Kladno last year, posting four assists and a -4 rating. 

He was in the lineup for Kladno’s Extraliga regular-season opener Wednesday, though, posting an assist and a -1 rating in 14:26 of ice time. It was a promising showing after tearing his hamstring less than a month ago, putting his availability for Wednesday’s game in doubt.

Jagr’s NHL resume needs no introduction. He may have never lifted the Stanley Cup in his prime, only winning it back-to-back with Pittsburgh in his first two NHL campaigns, but he was a game-changing threat in the NHL’s most offensively challenging era. 

Jagr won five scoring titles, including four straight from 1998-2001 and also won the Pearson Award (now the Ted Lindsay Award) as the most outstanding player as selected by their peers on three occasions (1999, 2000, 2006).

On the NHL’s all-time leaderboard, Jagr ranks fourth in games played, fourth in goals (766), fifth in assists (1,155) and second in points (1,921). He’s also a member of the Triple Gold Club, powering the Czechs to a gold medal at the 1998 Winter Olympics and winning a pair of World Championship gold medals (2005, 2010).

While Jagr donned the sweater of nine NHL teams — the Penguins, Rangers, Capitals, Panthers, Devils, Flyers, Bruins, Stars and Flames — he’ll always best be remembered for his peak years in Pittsburgh. That’s where he’ll likely return after his playing days are done next year. 

Rossi reported in May that the club was working to hire Jagr in a front-office role whenever he was ready to transition to the next chapter of his hockey career.