I traveled to Kladno in the Czech Republic to watch 52-year-old Jaromír Jágr play in his final season

KLADNO, Czech Republic — The rink that Rytíři Kladno, the team Jaromír Jágr owns and still plays for, calls home is closer to a college arena than one in the NHL. It seats just 5,200 in one bowl, and on this night, just before Christmas, the rink is packed, with additional fans piled in around the top in standing room several rows deep.

With Prague just about 30 minutes away, the dedicated Sparta Praha opposition section is packed and loud, but most fans in the building are wearing one jersey: Jágr’s. Some have scarves with pictures of his face on them. Kids too young to have ever seen him play for a team besides Kladno cheer alongside others who’ve followed his journey since he started with the club in the 1980s.

But it’s not just the locals.

On Dec. 22, the night I went to Kladno for my final chance to see Jágr play, I didn’t spot any Flyers jerseys from Jagr’s lone season in Philadelphia, but I did see a DeVonta Smith jersey — the Eagles really are everywhere — and the man scanning my ticket wore a Flyers hat. Of course there were a few Jágr Penguins jerseys, and a family visiting from North America, each wearing Jágr jerseys from a different one of his many NHL stops — the Rangers, Panthers, and Flames.

“After games, I’ve come up, and there’s people from North America, Alberta [Canada], bachelor parties, and we’re like, ‘What are you doing here?’” Kladno defenseman Griffin Mendel said. “‘Oh, we came to watch Jágr play.’ People are coming from all over the world to watch him. He’s a generational player, people just want to watch him play and get to say they’ve seen him play.”

Jágr made his NHL debut for the Penguins in 1990 and played for nine teams over his 24-year career in the United States. A surefire Hall of Famer once his career is over, Jágr won a pair of Stanley Cups in Pittsburgh and is a former MVP, a five-time scoring leader, and an eight-time NHL All-Star.

Now 52 — he turns 53 on Feb. 15 — Jágr puts more work in to be able to make it on the ice, but he has played in 22 of the team’s 34 games so far this year, mostly home games in Kladno, his hometown, where his mother still lives. Even his teammates are astounded by how he’s still able to get on this ice for each game.

“He takes his warmups pretty serious, but I think at that age, you kind of have to,” Kladno forward Mitch Hults said. “At 52, to keep himself in the game, and to be able to do that, just to watch what he does on an everyday basis, it’s cool to watch and see.”

Hults is Jágr’s stall mate, and the two have built a friendship, talking about everything from hockey to current events. Hults said it’s hard to pin down exactly how seeing Jágr’s longevity has impacted him. He’s just picked up “little things” along the way.

“To get to play with a Hall of Famer, it’s not very often that you’ll have that chance,” Hults said. “… It doesn’t matter where in the world, everyone knows who the guy is, right? He’s like the Wayne Gretzky of Europe, is what I like to say.”

Jágr didn’t make his plans to retire at the end of the season clear until just before it started, and he hasn’t said if he plans to continue as principal owner of the club following his retirement, or if he wants to sell.

Over the years, a number of NHL players have come up through Kladno, including longtime Flyer Jake Voraček, but none is as central to the club as Jágr, who took over as majority owner of the team from his father in 2011. In 2021, he told the Hockey News that “as long as my father breathes, I take the club as my responsibility. He held it for 20 years. As a son, I would be embarrassed if I left.” Jaromir Jágr Sr. died in 2022.

Kladno has bounced between the top and second levels of Czech hockey for decades, earning its latest promotion to Extraliga in 2021, but the club has finished in last place in Extraliga each of the last three seasons, and has had to fight off relegation.

Kladno is currently in 13th place, one above the last spot in the league, and just outside of the 12-team playoffs. That would force it to play in the relegation series for the fourth consecutive year. The visiting Sparta Praha squad is in second. By the end of the second period, which comes a few seconds early thanks to a medical emergency in the stands, Kladno is down, 4-0.

But just under four minutes into the third period, the crowd gets what it came for.

Jágr scores from the net front on the power play, his third goal of the season, breaking the record for the oldest player to score in professional hockey. He broke it again on Jan. 7, scoring a goal in an overtime loss to Plžen.

Kladno cannot complete the comeback, ultimately falling, 4-2, to Sparta on Dec. 22. Even more than a half hour after the game’s end, there’s still a line of people waiting in the lobby, hoping to meet Jágr before his professional hockey career is done.

After nearly four decades, it will finally end in March or April.

“He just loves the game,” Hults said. “He’s like the 8-year-old kid, 3-year-old kid playing outside still, like when we were growing up, either the backyard or on the ice on the lake, I think he still kind of carries that with him. I don’t know if that guy would ever not love the game, and I think that’s what keeps him going. At 52, that’s the only way I’d be able to play still, if I still love the game, right?”