The Pittsburgh Penguins announced today that a 1-year, $2 million contract that they had offered to Jaromir Jagr was being taken off of the table.
As per the club’s official website:
“We made what we thought was a very fair contract offer to Jaromir on Tuesday, based on his stated interest of returning to the Penguins,” said Ray Shero, the team’s executive vice president and general manager. "We made our best offer from the start, given our salary cap structure, in an attempt to facilitate a deal. But now, after several days, with an extended time frame for making a decision, and additional teams getting involved, we have decided to move in a different direction. It was never our intention to get involved in a free agent bidding war, and we have to focus on our team.
“Jaromir is one of the greatest players in Penguins history, and we wish him all the best.”
Shortly after the Penguins rescinded their offer, the Detroit Red Wings withdrew theirs as well.
There’s a number of ways to look at this, but my best guess is that Petr Svoboda, Jagr’s agent, came back to the Penguins with a higher salary number this morning and Shero was less than thrilled.
Last night, ESPN’s Scott Burnside reported that the ubiquitous Svoboda told him that the number of teams interested in Jagr’s talents was rapidly increasing.
“There’s a lot more teams now we’re talking to,” Svoboda told ESPN.com Thursday evening.
And with that list of teams growing, so too, assuredly, did the Czech winger’s demands.
Thus, finally, puts an end to the ridiculous social media phenomenon that was JagrWatch.
I think.