Pittsburgh Sports, Opinion and Politics | Just Watch the Game Blog

Now, in between Steelers, Pitt and West Virginia football games, we will be able to do more than talk about games.

Tonight we can start watching hockey games that count.

The Penguins in Vancouver is a late start but it’s also a pretty good one and it could be a Stanley Cup Final preview.

Versus makes it a doubleheader with the Flyers and the Bruins, which could be an Eastern Conference Final preview. It’s also Jaromir Jagr’s first game as a Flyer.

The man to watch in the early part of the season is Brendan Shanahan. He’s the NHL’s new Prefect of Discipline and he showed in the preseason that he’s not going to have any patience for illegal hits to the head.

I have a feeling that, before the month is out, we’re going to be reminded of what we missed when the Penguins had to play a third of the season without Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.

Drop the puck.

Boy are they going to boo him now.

Jaromir Jagr  took a million dollars more from the Philadelphia Flyers and a million dollars is a million dollars. Let’s hope that he really needs the money.

He’s already made $100 million playing hockey and for a little while it looked like a star athlete was going to make a decision based on something other than the money but Jagr was obviously just using the Penguins to play the free agency game.

I think he’ll be a good player for the Flyers and I think he would have been a good player for the Penguins but I also think that he’s still a flake and that could be a problem in Philadelphia.

I can’t blame anybody for taking a million dollars more but Jagr really comes across as a major league jagoff for allowing the Penguins and Penguins fans to believe that he was in it for any reason other than the money.

He could have just said he was interested in returning to the NHL and that he was going to consider all offers.

I always thought that the fans booing him every time he touched the puck was a little over the top.

Not anymore. Boo away.

There are rumors out there that Jaromir Jagr is coming back to the NHL and his first choice is Detroit.

His agent also contacted the Penguins.

He’s 39 and would come with some baggage but, at the right price, he could be a steal for a team looking to add offense without having to depend on him to be the go-to guy.

********************** Update… Update…**********************

This is from Molinari in Friday’s Post-Gazette…

Contrary to reports Thursday out of Detroit, no one representing Jaromir Jagr has contacted the Penguins to see if they might be interested in signing him. “We have not heard from anybody,” Shero said. The Detroit stories said Jagr’s agents have approached several teams — the Penguins, Red Wings, New York Rangers and Montreal were the ones identified — to gauge whether any might want to add him to their roster, and several indicated the Red Wings might be. The Penguins’ only interest in Jagr to this point has been to try to get him to return for a reunion of their 1991 Stanley Cup-winning club later this summer.

Click the link above to read Molinari’s full article.