Jaromir Jagr, the Skater

Jaromir Jagr, the Skater by Ross Bonander January 2014 As a member of The Hockey Writers draft team, I often hear about skating ability from scouts. It tends to be the first thing they look at, although, as Shane Malloy writes in The Art of Scouting, that doesn't mean they all agree on its importance from the scouting perspective. This is in part because, unlike something like size, skating is a skill which players can improve. The 2013-14 season marks Jaromir Jagr’s 25th year of professional hockey, and he is methodically working his way up the all-time scoring lists, all while leading his latest team, the New Jersey Devils, in points. This got me wondering: Perhaps throughout the 1700+ NHL points he’s accumulated, the take-you-out-of-your- seat stickhandling, the jaw-dropping dekes and sensational goals, maybe one aspect of Jagr's game deserved a closer look. Jaromir Jagr, the Skater. The great Eddie Johnston once echoed a sentiment expressed by everyone from Mario Lemieux to Scotty Bowman when he said: “I don’t know any player who is stronger on his skates than Jaromir Jagr. One on one, there has never been a player so dangerous.” For instance, in collecting his 1,723rd career point, an assist on an Adam Henrique goal, Jaromir Jagr victimized defenseman Nick Grossman in classic Jagr fashion: With fast hands, long reach, impeccable hockey sense … and all of it powered from, made possible by, his skates. After watching video both new and old, I concluded that for all the spectacular goals Jagr has scored, almost none of them would be possible were he anything short of one of the very best skaters in the game. To determine whether I was right or whether I had lost all perspective, I appealed to the expertise of a renowned skating instructor. The Birth of Power Skating. In his seminal book The Game, Ken Dryden argues that one main reason the Montreal Canadians of the late 1970s overcame the dirty play of the Philadelphia Flyers and won four straight Stanley Cups was due to their team speed. He wrote that coach Scotty Bowman understood better than most that, ... speed is disorienting ... like an old man in a thirty-year-old's world, it robs an opponent of coordination and control, stripping away skills, breaking down systems, making even the simplest tasks seem difficult.” In 1971, the New York Rangers hired local figure skating coach, Laura Stamm, to conduct power skating classes at their summer hockey camp. Two years later, Islanders GM Bill Torrey asked Stamm to make a better, faster skater out of promising draft pick Bob Nystrom, who had spent most of his first pro season in the minors. In the summer of 1973, the two met every morning for one hour, five days a week, for eight weeks. The following season, Nystrom emerged as one of the league's top rookies; he grew into a top two- way forward and key cog in the dynastic years of Islanders hockey. For Stamm, this led to more work with the Rangers, Devils, and Kings. These were the seeds of what she would develop into what is known today as the Laura Stamm International Power Skating System, a skating program taught across North America and Europe, to skaters of all ages, in countries as far-flung as Iceland. Her skating system helps hockey players learn to skate faster, with more power, mobility, greater balance, and with overall superior technique. Famous graduates of Stamm's system include Luc Robitaille, Brian Rafalski, Rob Niedermayer, Matt Carle, and hundreds of other pro hockey players, not to mention a player regarded by many as one of the finest skaters the game has ever seen, Scott Niedermayer. If anybody could talk to me about Jagr's skating ability, it was Stamm. As it turns out, she has been praising Jagr as a skater almost since the Kladno Kid came to Pittsburgh in the early 1990s. "I used to tell students to notice how low Jagr skated," she tells me over the phone from New York, on the eve of a massive snow storm. "His knees were bent so low that (even at his height) his head was almost level with the dashers." Indeed when he was younger, Jagr's knees were bent to at least a 90 degree angle, allowing him powerful strides and giving him uncommon speed for a player his size (6' 3" and 225 lbs). "When I got started, skating skills weren't valued in hockey," says Stamm. Played as it was in North America into the 1970's--strictly north-south, with wingers rarely venturing between the face-off dots, defensemen not joining the rush-- pro hockey didn't demand much in the way of skating technique. “There were few truly great skaters, outside of Bobby Orr,Yvan Cournoyer, and a few others." That began to change, influenced by the weaving style of play introduced by the Soviets and brought to North American audiences in the Summit Series. A Closer Look. I emailed Stamm links to some Jagr highlights and she singled out a few of them as prime examples of Jagr’s superior skating skills, notably the extraordinary balance he maintains throughout every dazzling deke. In fact, Jagr's stride, his balance in turns-- evident by the way he keeps his inside shoulder high-- and his low profile, are elements of the power skating technique pioneered by Stamm, although Jagr was not a student. Said Stamm, "I didn't know it when I first got started, but I was teaching the European method of skating without ever having seen European hockey." One of the clips Stamm singled out is widely regarded as Jagr’s most spectacular goal, one that, at the time, even Mario Lemieux declared to be among the greatest goals he’d ever seen. It was game one of the 1992 Stanley Cup Finals against Chicago. Following a faceoff in Chicago’s zone, Blackhawks forward Brent Sutter tries to clear the puck, only to have his clearing attempt intercepted by Jagr. In the ensuing three seconds, Jagr dekes around Dirk Graham just inside the blue line, maintaining his balance as Graham tries to trip him. Moving to the half-wall, Jagr keeps control of the puck in the space of a broom closet by executing at least four subtle moves using his feet alone to freeze Sutter. Jagr then dangles through Sutter and another Blackhawk as teammate Shawn McEachern sets a pick on a third defender, allowing Jagr the space to unleash a backhand that beat Eddie Belfour to tie the game. Not for nothing does broadcaster Harry Neale proclaim, “There’s only four people in the whole rink Jagr didn’t deke, and three of them are ushers!” (Cliff Welch/Icon SMI) Better Than You Think. Of course, you don't have to be a great skater to produce. Case in point, Dave Andreychuk. Another, less convincing case in point, is Wayne Gretzky. Gretzky skated with a hunch," said Stamm. "So he wasn't thought to be a great skater. But he was much better than you think."This comment reminded me of what Bobby Orr said about Gretzky: "He's not real fast but he's faster than you think. He doesn't have Bobby Hull's shot but it's better than you think." Jagr may not be as smooth a skater as, say, Paul Coffey, but he's smoother than you think. He may not be as fast as Scott Niedermayer, but he's faster than you think, even at 41. He may not be the greatest skater of all time, but he's much, much higher on that list than you think. Ross Bonander is a freelance health writer and quotations editor. His work includes Hockey Talk, a collection of memorable hockey quotes and So So In Centerfield, an unusual collection of baseball quotes. He writes extensively for the Lymphoma Information Network. This article was originally published at “The Hockey Writers.".

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