SUNRISE, Fla. — No one ever would dare question the designation of Jaromir Jagr as a generational player. But it is not as simple as that. Because there are questions about that as it applies to No. 68.
And the questions are these:
Which generation, exactly?
And how many of them?
The one in which he competed with Mario Lemieux against Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier and Raymond Bourque? The one in which he led a Broadway revival following the 2004-05 canceled season?
Or maybe the one in which he played against Howie Morenz and Eddie Shore?
The greatest European-born player in league history — who has the fourth-most points (1,817) and sixth most goals (729) all time in the NHL — still is lacing them up and still leading the way, this 43-year-old marvel of nature pacing the Panthers in scoring with 15 points (7-8) in 17 games entering Saturday night’s match against the Rangers.
He has a different body, dramatically trimmed from a once-preferred fighting weight of 245 pounds to a svelte 230. He is almost unrecognizable in street clothes unless you recognize him from his 18-year-old 1990-91 season. For a second, you think time has stood still.
Jagr explains his new physique by saying he essentially would be standing still on the ice at 245 playing against this new generation of world-class skaters.
“I don’t know if I would be slower, but everyone else would be faster,” he said following Friday’s practice. “Like when you stay still and everyone passes you, it is like you are going backwards.”
Jagr looks back only when prodded. He recognizes he cannot do the same things at the same rate he did while cutting a swath (but not cutting his mane) through the league the first 15 years or so of his career, but he will not yield, not this man.
For he is The Jagr, and he means to make a difference every night he skates onto the ice.
“In my thinking, nothing has changed, and I think that’s the whole key,” said No. 68, who has scored only one goal in the past nine games. “I still feel the same way.
“It is my responsibility to score goals and my responsibility to win games for my team. Nothing has changed in my mind.
“I know I am a different hockey player, but the same responsibility. I don’t think it is ever going to change in my life. If that changes, I won’t play anymore.”
Jagr, operating on a one-year, $3.5 million deal, is on his eighth team. There were 11 years in Pittsburgh; a year-and-a-half (that seemed like an eternity) in Washington; the three-and-a-half with the Rangers that restored the franchise’s good name; one season as a Flyer; a little over a half-season in Dallas; a portion of a year in Boston that featured a run to the Cup final; a year-and-a-half in New Jersey; and now here after arriving in advance of last year’s trade deadline.
“It just happened,” Jagr said of the North American travelogue. “I’ve always taken the positive from where I’ve been. I’m kind of lucky some team has always stepped up and given me the opportunity to play a top role.
“I’m appreciated here. It’s good for me. The weather helps, I can work out outside, which is better because you can get mentally tired working out indoors.
“I like it here, but it would be better if we won five more games,” added Jagr, whose team — composed of kids on the upswing and veterans on the other side of midnight — is a middling 8-8-3. “Everything is more fun when you win. When you lose, it is frustrating.
“I thought we’d have a better record for sure.”
The travelogue through the NHL was interrupted for the three-season self-imposed exile in Omsk of the KHL from 2008-09 through 2010-11 upon reaching free agency as a Ranger. Who knows where he would rank on the all-time lists with those three extra NHL seasons? But then, who knows if he would still be in the NHL if he hadn’t left?
“I liked it there during the [2004-05] lockout and promised them I would go back when I became a free agent,” he said. “It was the right thing for me. My mother and father were getting old, and I was able to see them a lot more often.
“I wasn’t in Moscow. I was in Siberia, where the people were very poor but very nice.They treated me like one of them.
“Plus, they were very religious. It was very good for me.”
No one knows how long Jagr’s NHL career will continue. He still intends to play for his hometown Kladno team when he is done here.
But know this.
Jagr is once in a once-in-a-generation player.
Or maybe two or three generations.