I wanted Max to stay…but I wanted Malone to stay too…and sometimes it’s better for both sides if the player takes advantage of a contract offer that probably isn’t ever going to be matched in the future.

Max left for money…yes…but you really can’t blame a guy who is trying to secure his future…can you?

I’d have a hard time booing Talbot…because I don’t think he did anything disingenuous.

Jagr, on the other hand…he played the Pens. If he REALLY wanted to come back to Pittsburgh…he would have worked out a deal and that would have been it. Truth is, he wanted to use the Pens to drive up his value. Otherwise, wouldn’t he have taken the $2M (or so) the Pens offered instead of the $3M the Flyers gave him?

Remember, at the time, the Flyers had just jettisoned Richards and Carter and there were plenty of gloom and doom fortune tellers in Philly and around the league that said the Flyers would struggle to make the playoffs. Why would he want to go there?

No…going back and aligning all the FACTS from the time…Jagr and his agent knew what they were doing and Jagr just doesn’t get it because he never understood the reason why he was booed in the first place…the fans just wanted him back.

Look at L.A. fans a decade back, booing Rob Blake every time he touched the puck as a member of the Avalanche. He’d played for the Kings his whole career to that point, but they booed him as if it was Stalin with the puck. As soon as he came back to the Kings? All was forgiven, yaaay.

The same would have happened with Jagr in Pittsburgh, if he’d gone there. All of the booing he heard there as part of the Rangers and Capitals, all would have been instantly forgiven. If he’d played for someone else- particularly a Western team- he might even have been cheered in Pittsburgh still. But he went to the archrivals across the state- that pretty much guaranteed the boo-birds would be out in force.

It’s sports, Jaromir. As Blake, Brett Favre, or LeBron James could tell you, it isn’t about what you’ve done- it’s about what you’ve done LATELY. What you did lately was sign with the one team that would guarantee the fury of Penguins fans.

Second – your feelings on the city of Pittsburgh have no bearing on this particular piece. If you just want to take potshots at the city their are probably other places you can do that.

Finally to the actual point – the reason people hate Double J is because of his surly demeanor, his unwillingness to mentor other players and to “play nicely in the sandbox” with other stars, and some of the great lengths that Mario went to to bring him back. I’m a diehard Pens fan, and I appreciate evertyhing Double J did for this team (like winning two cups, for instance), but at the end of the day, it comes down to something pretty simple: he signed with the Flyers. It’s no secret that they are our fiercest rival (apologies to Washington and New York), so it doesn’t matter who you are, if you sign with them you’re going to get booed.

But this whole idea of coming back to play here…one that Jagr and his agent seemed to play up…it stunk from start to finish.

Jagr DID say (a few years back) he would play for the league minimum in Pittsburgh after his contract in the KHL was up. He said he owed it to Mario.

His agent DID say during this summer that Jagr’s “heart was in Pittsburgh”.

He and his agent were given a deadline by Shero for a decision on an offer that was made…and to the best of my knowledge, they DID NOT respond by/at the deadline and did not request to discuss the offer in any more detail. Then Shero pulled it.

Whether or not he ever REALLY wanted to play in Pittsburgh again, we’ll probably never know…but what happened during the summer ends up looking a lot more like he used the Pens to get better offers…and then went to their biggest rival.

If he can’t understand some of anger from that…then he really just doesn’t get it.

I rarely say fans should boo a player…but in this case…let him have it.

As a matter of fact, if you want to go off of something that Jagr actually said, the Flyers offer wasn’t his most lucrative choice. He’s been out of the league four years, and he wanted to come back in the situation he felt was best for him, so he picked Philly. As a Philly fan, I can understand the boobirds being out tomorrow, I think these boos will reek of sour grapes.

And yeah, i do seem to recall jagr getting his way by getting out of town. Not everything was peachy when he left. Thats why we hated him the first time.

But as you said, once you have a shot to get back with that person, you think “ehhh alright, lets forget about before.”

There were wide spread reports that he would come and play for pittsburgh for league minimum. Then all of a sudden, he’s like “hey i think i’ll take more money and go to your biggest rival.”

If jagr doesnt understand why people hate him for that, he’s an idiot.