Standing at his stall after the New York Rangers' morning skate, Jaromir Jagr looked around at a deep thicket of reporters and cameras in the cramped Mellon Arena visitors' locker room and took a breath.

"Now I have a chance to explain what really happened," he said of nearly seven years ago, when he asked the Penguins to trade him because, he said, the team could not otherwise afford to be competitive.

Jagr, who is facing the Penguins -- and the booing fans who never have forgiven him -- in the playoffs for the first time, figured yesterday hours before Game 1 would be as good a time as any to address his unhappy parting after he helped the team that drafted him in the first round in 1990 win Stanley Cups in '91 and '92.

"How many opportunities am I going to have?" said Jagr, 36, who is contemplating free agency, retirement or a move to the Russian Super League next season.

"It doesn't really matter because it happened [seven] years ago. It's not that I'm upset about it, but nobody knew the truth."

Although former teammate Mario Lemieux brought the Penguins out of bankruptcy in 1999, the club continued to struggle financially for several seasons.

Through the course of 2000-01, Jagr decided it was important for the team to keep three other prolific players -- Marty Straka, Robert Lang and Alex Kovalev.

"It was kind of impossible to sign all of them, and if we wouldn't sign them, we wouldn't have a chance to do anything," Jagr said. "I thought it was going to be a lot easier for the team to trade one guy than let go three guys. That's when I made the decision to go to [then-general manager] Craig Patrick and told him it's going to be a lot easier for the organization if they trade me."

Except that it was something close to a bluff.

One the Penguins called July 11, 2001, when they shipped him and Frantisek Kucera to Washington for Kris Beech, Michal Sivek and Ross Lupaschuk and about $5 million.

"Maybe I was sad a year later or I was sad when they traded me because I said that just to try to push them to find the money or get a new arena," Jagr said. "Being a young player, you don't think like a businessman.

"I didn't necessarily think they were going to trade me right away. I thought they might try to do it the other way, try to find more money to sign all the guys and keep me here."

Jagr, who won five scoring titles and one league MVP while with the Penguins, was coming off a 121-point season and had been reunited at midseason with Lemieux, who came out of retirement.

"I just wanted to make it easier for the team," Jagr said. "Plus, there was no reason to keep me when Mario came back. I thought it was going to be good for the team. But I loved it here. Why would I want to be traded? Especially when I didn't know where I was going to go.

"But I think they did good to trade me. I thought it was a good move at the right time."

Jagr couldn't keep up his point pace with the Capitals and was traded to the Rangers in January 2004.

Jagr said a lot of his frustration during the 2000-01 season came before Lemieux's return, when Lang, Straka and Kovalev made up one line, and that eased when the Hall of Famer rejoined the team.

"There was nobody else left here on this team, and a lot of guys expected me to have the same numbers and goals," he said.

"It's kind of impossible when you don't have a centerman.

"Everything changed when Mario came back. All of a sudden, it was great again. I could score a lot of goals, and we could win."

Asked if a reluctance to share the spotlight with Lemieux influenced his decision to request a trade, Jagr was adamant.

"No," he said. "Without him, I wouldn't be playing right now. No matter what happened, I'm still going to respect him until I die. I'm not lying.

"You have to respect the players, the teachers I learned from. If I wouldn't have been drafted by the Pittsburgh Penguins and see Mario play, who knows where I would be right now? Maybe I would be in Europe. Maybe I wouldn't play hockey at all. All the things I learned were from him. Not many young guys that come into the league are so lucky like I was."