The Pittsburgh Penguins of the early 1990s were larger than life, a great team that should have won more than two championships. Eight of the 20 players who suited up the night the Penguins first won the Stanley Cup, on May 25, 1991, in Minnesota, are now in the Hockey Hall of Fame. The coach and general manager of those teams are also in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
It’s fitting, then, that Jaromir Jagr will one day be the ninth player from that team to have his bust displayed in Toronto.
You can’t say the ’90s without the number nine, and you can’t talk about ’90s culture in Pittsburgh without Jagr.
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The Pittsburgh stories that built the legend of Jaromir Jagr
“The players parked in this parking lot outside of Civic Arena back then,” former Penguins teammate Rick Tocchet said. “And when Jags walked to his car, I mean, the teenagers who were there went completely crazy. He had the mullet going. “All ’90s clothes. It was like the Beatles had appeared.”
Ah, the mullet. Many players sported mullets long ago, but few could proudly sport hair of Jagr’s caliber.
For almost his entire career in Pittsburgh (which spanned from 1990 to 2001), Jagr sported a mullet. While the mullet was more of a ’80s phenomenon in the United States, the Pittsburgh trend is historically a decade behind. So he was a Pittsburgher from the start, a teenager raised in a communist country who somehow fit in from the start.
“Part of his appeal was his overall appearance,” said Paul Steigerwald, the veteran Penguins broadcaster who immediately introduced Jagr to Pittsburgh in 1990, just as he had done with Mario Lemieux in 1984.
“Jagr looked like a ‘Thor’ character when he showed up in Pittsburgh. He was very handsome, but also exotic. He was some kind of ancient and mythical creature. We had never seen anyone who looked like him, especially at 18 years old. “People just fell in love with it immediately, in a very short time.”
Jagr arrived in Pittsburgh in the summer of 1990 and spoke almost no English. Like many in his position, he turned to ’90s television to learn the language.
In particular, Jagr binge-watched “Married… With Children” and “Saved by the Bell.”
A few years into his career, a celebrity hockey game took place at the Civic Arena after a Penguins game. Mark-Paul Gosselaar, who played Zack Morris in “Saved by the Bell,” was one of the participants.
After the Penguins game, Jagr realized this.
“I can still hear him yelling in the locker room about it,” said Mark Madden, the Pittsburgh radio announcer who covered the Penguins for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at the time. He “kept yelling at Petr Nedved to hurry up and get dressed so he could go watch Zack Morris play hockey. He was legitimately excited about it. I don’t think he’s ever seen him so happy.”
Jagr’s enthusiasm for seeing a ’90s teen idol paled in comparison to the enthusiasm Pittsburgh showed toward its own teen idol.
Pittsburgh teens tried to grow their hair as magnificently as Jagr’s. Few succeeded, but many tried. Teenage girls from Pittsburgh tried to date Jagr. Many achieved it.
“He was the ultimate rock star,” Tocchet said. “I have never seen young people fall in love with a player like him.”
When it became public that Jagr liked Kit Kat bars, the Penguins suddenly had a problem. Thousands and thousands of Kit Kats arrived by mail at the Civic Arena.
“Oh my gosh, Kit Kat bars,” former Penguins teammate Kevin Stevens said with a laugh.
Jagr’s preference for them, and the response of his fans, forced the voice of the Penguins, Mike Lange, to make an announcement.
“I had to broadcast during a game that people had to stop sending Kit Kat bars into the arena,” Lange said. “She had gotten out of control.”
So had Jagr’s driving. While the number is still unclear, Jagr was issued a huge number of speeding tickets during his first two years in Pittsburgh. Minor details, like speed limits, didn’t interest him much.
Speeding tickets became so frequent that Jagr briefly had his driver’s license revoked during the 1992 postseason, forcing Lemieux to provide transportation to and from games.
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It’s good that Jagr made those playoffs. That’s when he became a star on the ice. Off the ice, he had been that way for a couple of years.
Those penguins were blessed with all-time greats, and perhaps the only thing more notable than their talent was the size of their personalities. Despite Lemieux’s shyness, his teammates were bold and beloved in Pittsburgh. Stevens famously made his prediction when the Penguins trailed the Bruins in the 1991 Welsh Conference Final. Phil Bourque talked about “partying on the river all summer” with the Stanley Cup, and then he did just that. Ulf Samuelsson was perhaps the loudest of the group.
But then there was Jagr, who perhaps had the biggest personality of them all.
He would simply handle interviews after the Penguins won playoff series in 1991 and 1992, taking microphones away from reporters and cutting into a monologue on live television.
His comments in Chicago after the Penguins swept the Blackhawks to win the Stanley Cup in 1992 became the stuff of Pittsburgh legend. Lange’s “Elvis just left the building” call after the Penguins’ win did not go unnoticed by Jagr at the time.
They asked him about the parade that would be held in Pittsburgh to commemorate the victory.
“I want to see some pretty girls,” he replied. “I don’t care about Elvis. Only pretty girls. Hello.”
As Jagr’s greatness grew through the mid-’90s, so did his marketing.
Pittsburgh kids didn’t just eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. More like it had to be Jaromir Jagr’s peanut butter.
Jagr wasn’t particularly mature during that time. He didn’t have to be. The Penguins had a lot of adults, and Jagr’s childish personality only made him more popular in Pittsburgh, especially among the Penguins’ growing, young fan base.
Lemieux could be the king, and he was. Jagr was the prince. He frequently appeared on local television stations to give weather reports. He did the same thing on WDVE’s morning radio show. He was the class clown, but he was smarter than anyone else in the class. He gives a laugh and a smile and everyone faints.
“It was like when Pierre Larouche showed up in Pittsburgh,” Lange said. “It was like when Paul Coffey came along. But I thought that with Jaromir it was even bigger. “You’ve never seen people fall in love with someone like that.”
Jagr wore jean jackets, was obsessed with popular television shows, and liked grunge music. What made him unique, perhaps, was that he came from a faraway land that featured a very different culture, and yet he was very American from the beginning.
Even before Jagr arrived in Pittsburgh, he carried a photograph of Ronald Reagan in his wallet. For him, the United States was the promised land.
Pittsburgh quickly became his playground and became a cultural influence with few peers in the sports world.
“I saw it the first time I took it to the mall,” Steigerwald said. “He was like any other kid in that mall. He was just bigger, stronger, had better hair and was better at hockey. He was so cool. “Everyone wanted to be like him.”
Of course, there was only one of him.
“He had the whole city in his hands,” Stevens said. “A heartbreaker at 18 years old. It was something to see. “People wanted to be around him and they wanted to be like him.”
(Photo: Al Messerschmidt/Associated Press)
