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NFL

Tuesday, October 24
With Pens franchise in flux,
Jagr continues to shine

By Rob Parent
Special to ESPN.com

He has proven beyond the shadow of his formerly flowing locks that he is the best player on the planet. His skills symbolize the art in hockey; define the grace the game requires, yet leave room for the physical strength he's also capable of exerting.

On the ice, Jaromir Jagr can skate around or bowl over anyone. His scoring prowess is unmatched, his desire to compete as intact as any other superstar's. What he is being asked to do now, however, is a supreme challenge only a few of sports' historic icons have been able to achieve:


	Jagr, despite his groin injury Tuesday, has had an amazing start.

Win for an organization that is losing its own desire to compete.

"I know I'm scoring a lot of (points), but I feel like I'm playing at 50 percent of what I can play," Jagr said. "I'm not playing good. I don't play the way I want to play. I know I can play better."

Perhaps, it should be duly reminded that Jagr, just entering his prime at 27, leads the league in scoring with 14 goals and 33 points. Remarkably, he had scored at least one point in every Penguins game this season until Tuesday night, the streak ending at 15 when a strained groin forced him to leave midway through the first period, with him having logged less than three minutes of painful playing time.

His groin has given him a history of problems, but just as he refused to let it keep him down and out as his Penguins were struggling for survival in the playoffs last spring, don't expect Jagr to stay out for long now. For if he does, Pittsburgh's hockey season might be history, too.

With a hardy 3-2 win over Buffalo on Tuesday, the Penguins proved for at least one evening that they can win in the absence of Jagr. Don't bet on them making it two in a row. Sure, they've managed three victories in their last four games, and at 15 points are tied with resurgent Washington and the reeling Rangers for ninth place in the East. But prior to this little run, the Pens had gone winless in eight games (0-6-2), their longest such streak since Czech teen idol Jagr joined them in 1990.

Worse yet, their goalie of intrigue, Tom Barrasso, had been milking an injury all season, and their backup goalies are pure minor league. And despite Jagr's offensive feats, their lack of scoring depth was catching up to them. If his groin is on the way down now, the bottom will be all set to drop out on Pittsburgh.

"It's not too bad," Penguins general manager Craig Patrick said after Tuesday's game. "But we didn't want to take any chances."

His hands tied economically, Patrick hasn't retained people like Ron Francis and Petr Nedved. He hasn't moved to replace them with any proven offensive aides, instead counting on his guile to bring in more people like Martin Straka and German Titov, neither of whom were any good until they got to Pittsburgh.

Instead, Patrick has taken the high road, agreeing to make Jagr the highest-paid player in the league and then asking him to be the whole team. Is that such a ridiculous request?

Or are the Penguins resigned to the fate that they can't compete for another Stanley Cup until their bankbooks are made whole again?

"I know I have some kind of talent. I know what I've got," Jagr said in a preseason interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "And I know that if I work very hard, more than anybody else or (the same) as everybody else, I feel like I can be better than everybody else."

His words hardly hollow promises, Jagr enjoyed a first six weeks of the season that were unlike anyone else's. Since he saw it wasn't making that much of a difference on the team's standings chart, however, he saw his performance in a different light than his many admirers did.

Jagr thought he could be more physical, thought he wasn't playing defensively sound hockey -- which to him means forecheck the other guys incessantly, another facet of his game that he believes hasn't yet rounded into shape.

In short, Jagr said, "We'll see how things are when I get to where I want to be.

"Maybe I'm not going to score so many goals or points, but I'm going to feel better about the way I'm playing the game," he said. "You guys look at stats; I look at the way I want to play the game."

If he now is forced to play it with a chronically aching groin, things could turn very nasty in Pittsburgh. The bad start -- this little positive run they're on only started because of four unanswered goals in the final eight minutes bailed them out with a 5-4 win over awful Montreal last week -- coupled with coach Kevin Constantine's shaky status, could lead to a midseason shakeup in Mario Lemieux's first year as owner.

But a change in midstream never yields a Cup of gold in the spring. And why would any team with Jaromir Jagr want to tear it up and start all over again next year?

Constantine, a Jack Adams Award candidate the last two seasons, is under contract only through this season, and isn't a favorite of either Lemieux's or Jagr's. But he is a disciplinarian who has made the Penguins more competitive than they should have been the past two years, and admitted before the season began that he wouldn't mind being a "free agent coach" next summer, especially since there will be a new job with a team in his native state of Minnesota.

Of course, if Barrasso's latest ailment (this one a knee) is suddenly cured and Jagr's groin isn't that much of a problem, Constantine will be able to focus on another playoff run for a club that annually overachieves in the spring.

Primarily because the best player on the planet wills it to do so.

Take a dive, John ... but with Joe's other skate.
At last word, John Muckler was still employed as a head coach for the New York Rangers. Stay tuned to ESPN for the impending, unavoidable announcement of his reassignment.

With Muckler, it's gone beyond the point of hope. His boss needs him as a scapegoat, his players don't want him as a coach. Really, there's no reason to believe he'll last until tomorrow with this team, except for that little $1 million contract extension Rangers president Neil Smith gave him this year.

That could be what's delaying this firing process, since Smith rocketed his budget to nearly $59 million, and Muckler's Rangers have responded with a 6-10-3 record and a power play that's a comedy show all its own (5-for-79 overall, 0-for-35 on the road, 1-for-its-last-39 overall). Smith also has heard complaints from the team about misuse of personnel, about lack of development of younger players and any number of other tried-and-true excuses Smith can go to Dave Checketts with in an effort to save his own executive skin.

As Flyers coach Roger Neilson, another in a long line of coaches fired by Smith, said the other day: "The coach is always the first to go. No question about that."

If Muckler has any doubt, he wasn't saying so in recent days. On Saturday night, he went on a pregame radio show and talked about increasing media speculation about his job status, saying, "There's nothing I can say to change things. I can say it's not fair, but I know it's part of the business."

He sounded emotional, and his players knew that night's game would be played under the billing of "Let's Win One for the Mucker." So they promptly laid down and lost 5-2 to the Bruins, a game that ended with several minutes of "Fire Muckler!" chants ringing around the Garden.

Looks like Neil just wasted another million bucks. You know his bosses are waiting for Muckler's pink slip to come across their desks now.

"It doesn't affect me," Muckler said. "I know why the people are upset, and I kind of agree with them. I know why they're mad ... I'm mad, too."

If he was angry with his players, just think how mad Muckler was at one of the Bruins.

That would be none other than Joe Murphy, who played for Muckler in Edmonton back in his coaching glory days, and was all ready to play for the Rangers this week, as per Muckler's suggestion to Smith. So with heed born of need, Smith gave unrestricted free agent Murphy room and board in Rye, N.Y., for six days, allowing him to practice and get in shape until a contract was formalized. With other matters of panic to attend to, Smith pushed it off until after the weekend ... then was stunned when Murphy signed with the Bruins on Friday.

From an economic standpoint, you can't blame Murphy, since he reportedly received twice the $500,000 deal Smith was going to offer him for the remainder of this season. But when he showed up at Rye that day to collect his things, Murphy claimed he found his sticks broken, one skate missing, and assistant coach (and fellow Oilers alum) Charlie Huddy waiting to get in his face.

"Supposedly, Neil threw my skate in the river (because) he's so mad," Murphy, who mistook Long Island Sound for a smaller body of water, told the New York Daily News.

"He had me under his nose for six days, and he decided he had other priorities. Now they're mad they don't have me. Obviously, they're mad, or they wouldn't be throwing my skate into a river or cutting my sticks in half. That sounds like something for grade school."

Nah, just the natural state of hockey in New York under the Smith regime. Smith denied Murphy's charges, calling them "bizarre." But he wouldn't address the media claims that Muckler's job status is hanging by a thread. And while that seems obvious, a Muckler firing is not cut and dried, either.

In fact, it's possible Smith will move to make Muckler a player personnel director or some such front office thing. That is, unless the Joe Murphy fiasco changed his mind.

Canadien games
It's time to break it all up in Montreal, as indicated by the resignation of Canadiens president Ron Corey at the start of the year, and the recent three-week winless streak that brought disgrace to the team. So the Montreal Gazette, all but calling for overmatched general manager Rejean Houle's head, thought it necessary to quote a talk show caller in the newspaper.

Said fan Jean-Rene Dufort: "I have a hockey video on my "Game Boy" at home. I tried to trade Barry Richter for Jaromir Jagr and the computer wouldn't let me. Then I tried to trade Patrick Roy and Mike Keane for Jocelyn Thibault, Martin Rucinsky and Andrei Kovalenko, but the computer wouldn't let me. Maybe Rejean Houle should get himself a Game Boy."

In case you didn't know, Roy and then-Habs captain Keane all but assured the Colorado Avalanche a Cup after that trade was made in 1996. Thibault and Kovalenko are long gone from Montreal, while Rucinsky is still mediocre.

Varada finally shows up
Congratulations are in order to Vaclav Varada, a top-line winger for the Buffalo Sabres who scored his first goal of the season against the Bruins last week, one that went down as his first goal in more than 45 regular-season games.

Varada, standing out as an excellent example of Buffalo's offensive ineptitude in the early going, somehow managed to go the last 30 games of last season without a goal, scored five in 21 games in the playoff drive to the Cup finals, then figured the time was right for a contract holdout.

So he missed all of training camp and then went 15 straight without a goal to start the season -- until a blooper that bounced off the goalie's blocker pad, the post and then the goalie's back before going in against the Bruins. Oh boy.

"I was beginning to think I would never score in the regular season again," he said. "It was scary."

It was also a terrific relief to Varada's teammates, who had to endure his promise that he wouldn't shave until he scored another goal. He was apparently looking like a Russian Moses.

"At least now he can shave," said top line center Michael Peca. "We were really starting to get concerned about that. We didn't want to see him tripping over his own beard on the ice. That would be bad form."

Pain in the pinky
Of the 57 games the Florida Panthers have played since dealing for Pavel Bure in January, he's missed 38 of them because of a variety of ailments, most notably a knee that needed rebuilding. But the latest injury which has Bure down is a fractured bone in his pinky finger.

A hockey player out because of a sore pinky?

"He's real sore," Panthers general manager Bryan Murray said. "He's real frustrated at some of the comments that have been made about him. That he can't play with a little broken finger and all that kind of stuff. It really disappoints him."

Actually, Bure's fracture may be a compound one, and is severe enough that doctors were considering surgery on it. But Bure has declined surgery because he doesn't want to miss the four to six weeks required to recover from such an operation. Instead, the plan is he'll play as soon as he's able to grip a stick. Whenever that will be.

"It hurts a lot," Bure said. "The doctors said, 'If you don't do the surgery, your finger is going to look funny.' I said, 'I don't care if it looks funny as long as it's functional.' "

Eastern shorts

All you nostalgic Florida hockey fans undoubtedly were excited by Scott Mellanby's killing of a mouse last week. Yes, the same Panthers captain who started the throwing of the rubber rats during that magical 1995-96 season -- a fan craze begun when Mellanby killed a rat in the Panther locker room before scoring two goals in an win over Calgary early that season -- scored twice last Wednesday in a 4-1 win in Atlanta. Afterward, it was revealed he had killed a field mouse that had wandered into the visitors locker room.

Although the Thrashers look very much like the expansion team everyone expected them to be (3-10-2-1, worst in the NHL through Tuesday), several veterans on the club had forgotten what it felt like to play for a bad team. "I was thinking the other day, last year I played on two teams that won their division, Carolina and Ottawa," said Nelson Emerson, a former sufferer for the Hartford Whalers. "But that's how it goes. Not everybody can be on first-place hockey teams. There are 28 teams in the league now and some will be great and others will have tough times. But, hey, coming into this, you knew it wasn't going to be easy."

Quotable:
"As you all know, having spent some 20-odd years on Long Island, I've been a big Rangers fan. So rooting for them really comes naturally to me," -- Panthers president and former Islanders boss Bill Torrey, speaking with tongue firmly planted in cheek when asked about the Rangers' continued woes.

Rob Parent covers the NHL for the Delaware County (Pa.) Times. His NHL East column appears every week on ESPN.com.


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