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Expect Jagr to seek NHL's No. 1 salary from next team

Sunday, July 01, 2001

If he had wanted, Jaromir Jagr could have made this summer pretty miserable for the Penguins' management.

Think about it ...

He could have given them a list of teams to which he would accept being traded, a la Eric Lindros. Instead, he has stated he would be as happy to play for a cellar dweller as a contender.

He could have refused to consider signing a contract extension, opting to ride out the final two years of his existing deal and test unrestricted free agency. Instead, he vowed he would happily enter talks with his new employer about a long-term commitment, thus protecting that team's investment.

But there is one catch, and it could be sizable: When Jagr signs an extension, he will want to be the NHL's highest-paid player.

Even though Jagr has made it clear he will be amenable to any trade under his existing contract, any potential new employers will have to understand he ultimately will want to regain his spot at No. 1 on the pay list.

And it is difficult to argue against Jagr's case.

The only player who deserves more is Mario Lemieux, based on being the game's premier gate attraction and its most prolific scorer -- in terms of points per game -- this past season. But Lemieux, as an owner, is in the unique bind of being forever unable to test the market.

This past season, Jagr was No. 3 on the NHL's salary list at $9.4 million, trailing the Avalanche's Peter Forsberg and the Mighty Ducks' Paul Kariya at $10 million each. And by next season, for which Jagr is scheduled to make $10 million, he might well fall to fifth, depending on how much Joe Sakic and Rob Blake land on the open market this summer.

That Jagr would rank that low, by any standard, is faulty.

He has won the league scoring title the past four years, producing 446 points. In that time, he has finished with 8.1 percent more points than the cumulative sum of the four second-place men.

Sakic? He finished among the top five scorers twice, netting a total of 358 points.

Rest assured: Someone will want Jagr, and someone will pay him what he is worth. One lousy playoff does little to obscure some of the best numbers in the history of the sport.

Icy chips

The Capitals were prepared to make Jeremy Roenick an offer more lucrative than the five-year, $37.5 million contract he plans to sign with the Flyers. And George McPhee, Washington's general manager, is furious such a deal was finished before the start of the free agency season today. "We're indignant," McPhee told the Washington Post. "We play by the rules." This time, it hurt the Capitals. The Flyers, Stars and Red Wings had been granted permission by the Coyotes to talk to Roenick, but Washington never asked.

Look for the Capitals to be even more aggressive now in seeking out someone to jumpstart their popgun offense.

The Flyers' two big signings in the past month, Roenick and John LeClair, are 31. Both got five-year contracts, the total of which is $82.5 million. Both play rugged styles, the kind which wear down a player early in his career. And General Manager Bob Clarke declared after the Roenick signing that he would pursue no more big-name free agents. Does anyone think the Flyers are in better shape now than they were a month ago?

Nearly a dozen of the 26 players who finished the playoffs with the Penguins could play in the Olympics. The five confirmed are Lemieux for Canada; Jagr and Martin Straka for the Czech Republic; and Alexei Kovalev and Darius Kasparaitis for Russia. Others receiving consideration are Robert Lang, Josef Beranek and Frantisek Kucera for the Czech Republic; Johan Hedberg and Hans Jonsson for Sweden; Janne Laukkanen for Finland; and Aleksey Morozov for Russia.

Expect the Rangers -- who else? -- to be first in line in the Bob Boughner bidding, which opens today. They have had their sights set on him for a while.

There is positively no truth to speculation that Wayne Gretzky used a Giant Eagle Advantage Card to buy the Coyotes earlier this year. Yes, he has lopped $22 million off the team's payroll in the past three months -- including dumping Roenick and Keith Tkachuk -- to drop it to roughly $24 million. But the team lost more than $25 million this past season and was going nowhere.

Brent Sutter, coach of Red Deer in the WHL, believes the Penguins could have a carbon copy of the Oilers' plucky, prolific Ryan Smyth in first-round draft pick Colby Armstrong: "He's got that junkyard dog mentality," Sutter told the Canadian Press. "He can play it any way you want it. He's got the skill to play a skill game and he's got the grit to play a feisty game. I tell Colby when he's in other people's faces that's when he's at his best."

Alexei Yashin won't get to wear his familiar No. 19 with the Islanders. They plan to retire that number next season -- finally -- in honor of Bryan Trottier.

Busy as the Islanders were last weekend at the NHL Entry Draft, they're not done making deals. Look for General Manager Mike Milbury to try to move perennial 30-goal man Mariusz Czerkawski this summer. But don't look for Czerkawski in a deal for Kasparaitis. Czerkawski is seeking a new contract worth more than $2 million and thus hardly fits the Penguins' plans to save money in the trade.

Craig Button, the Flames' general manager, acquired goaltender Roman Turek from the Blues last weekend, then quickly named him Calgary's No. 1 guy. Button added that Turek might not have been the target of so much criticism in St. Louis this past season if Blues Coach Joel Quenneville had done the same. Quenneville waffled between Turek and Brent Johnson all year. "What you should do is reverse the roles on him," Button told the Calgary Sun. "Ask Joel how he'd feel if the owner or manager says, 'You're our coach, but we'll see how it goes after this game.' How would he like that?"

The Blackhawks are working to acquire Phil Housley from the Flames. Housley is 37 and makes $2.5 million, but the Penguins undoubtedly still wish they would have acquired him rather than the robustly ineffective Kucera when they had an either-or choice in March. Housley acknowledged this week he gladly would have waived his no-trade clause to come to the Penguins at the time.

Courtesy of Vancouver Sun columnist Gary Mason, on Markus Naslund's signing a three-year, $15 million extension with the Canucks Thursday: "... we should be thankful that back in 1996 someone in the Pittsburgh Penguins organization thought Alek Stojanov had more upside than a certain soft-spoken Swede on the team." Still stings, doesn't it?

Ninety-two days until the puck drops between Lemieux and Sakic.

Dejan Kovacevic can be reached at dkovacevic@ post-gazette.com.