Emphatically Denying Jagr Rumors

Reading the Rodent earlier today, I saw an interesting tidbit about Ken Holland calling the Rangers to ask about Jaromir Jagr.

Which brings us to a rumor in early December claiming Detroit’s Ken Holland had approached his original-six counterpart about the availability of Jagr. Credibility of this tale was suspect. After all, why would anyone want to tamper with the chemistry of a club dominating its division? And the Red Wings already boast the league’s most potent offense.

What did catch my attention was the backchannel feedback associated with Glen’s purportedly sounding out the team captain on such a change of venue. Jagr nixed the Red Wings according to this tale, but said he would consider moving to another club as long as it was within the Eastern Conference and was a team with a good situation.

Rodent is looking at it more from the Rangers perspective and I think he does a solid job of showing that this deal is not expected to happen. It’s not a rumor.

George Malik grabbed the same story via Fox Sports and also denies it, so all sorts of bases.

The thing that I think is so interesting about the non-rumor is that, prior to his trade to the Rangers, Jagr was very close to becoming a Red Wing.

In about November of 2003, two months before Jagr was sent to Madison Square Garden, I heard secondhand through a trusted source that Jagr was headed to Detroit. Obviously, that didn’t happen, but it was supposedly very close and it’s something I find interesting with the Wings calling about him yet again.