Jaromir Jagr (Jagr Jaromir)

Jágr began skating at the age of three. At the age of 16, he was playing at the highest level of competition in Czechoslovakia for HC Kladno.

Before he had a clean grasp on the English language, he could be heard reading the daily weather forecast on Pittsburgh radio station WDVE in his broken, thickly accented English. He and teammate (and fellow countryman) Jiří Hrdina were promoted as the "Czechmates", a play on the term "checkmate" from chess. Some Penguins fans realized that the letters in his first name could be scrambled to form the anagram "Mario Jr.", a reference to teammate Mario Lemieux.

In addition to his hockey skills, Jágr was also well-known for sporting a mullet throughout much of his career.

In 2000–01, Jágr was struggling to find his scoring touch and faced criticisms about his relationship with coach Ivan Hlinka. With the return of Mario Lemieux from retirement, the Penguins had two superstars but friction developed between the two; Jágr held the captaincy but many fans regarded Lemieux as the talisman of the team. Also, the struggling, small-market Penguins could, with Lemieux back, no longer hope to afford Jágr's massive salary. Thus on July 11, 2001, they traded him (along with František Kučera) to the Washington Capitals for Kris Beech, Michal Sivek and Ross Lupaschuk.

This prompted the Caps to unload much of their high-priced talent in order to save money—not just a cost-cutting spree, but also an acknowledgement that their attempt to build a contender with high-priced veteran talent had failed. Disgruntled, the Washington ownership spent much of 2003 trying to trade Jágr, but a year before a new Collective Bargaining Agreement was to be signed, few teams were willing to risk $11 million on Jágr.

During the NHL labor dispute in 2004–05, he played for HC Kladno in the Czech Republic, and afterward for the Avangard ice-hockey team at Omsk in Russia.

Prior to the 2005–06 season, the Rangers had missed the playoffs for seven consecutive seasons. Following the fire sale of the high-priced underachieving veterans that made up the team's roster, as well as the retirement of long-time captain Mark Messier, many experts picked the Rangers to be the worst team in the NHL. Jágr disagreed and promised the team would surprise a lot of people and make the Stanley Cup playoffs. He started strong during the beginning of the 2005 season and the return from the lockout of the NHL. He became only the fourth player in NHL history to score 10 or more goals in less than 10 games at the start of a season. His return to dominance helped the Rangers return to the Stanley Cup playoffs, but injuries to Jágr and others contributed to a quick Ranger exit in a first round sweep of the Broadway Blueshirts by the archnemesis New Jersey Devils.

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