Kyle Dubas officially doing something in Pittsburgh that should have been done a long time ago
During his time in Toronto, former Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas always made it a point to honour players in various ways - especially players who had become historical icons in Toronto.
Obviously, the most recent example of this was the Borje Salming tributes dating back to last season, just before Salming had passed after a lengthy battle with ALS. Dubas had also honoured Rodion Amirov during his courageous battle with brain cancer, having him join the Leafs for the home opening ceremonies last season against Washington.
There are countless other stories involving Dubas and the Leafs honouring players, both past and present, in different ways. Now that Dubas has moved on to Pittsburgh, he's seeing to it that a storied member of the organization is honoured in the right way.
The Penguins have officially announced on Friday that they plan to raise Jaromir Jagr's #68 to the rafters at PPG Paints Arena on February 18th, 2024.
Jagr's astonishing NHL career spanned an incredible 24 seasons and 1,733 regular season NHL games. He also amassed an incredible 208 career playoff games. He remains the NHL's 2nd all-time leading scorer, behind only "The Great One", Wayne Gretzky. Jagr's 1,921 points may not even surpass Gretzky's career assist total (1,963), but it still impressive nonetheless.
What an incredible career. What's even more impressive is that, up until last season, Jagr was still playing professional hockey 51 years of age. He turns 52 in February.
I find it quite surprising that the Penguins organization hadn't raised his #68 to the rafters already. He hasn't played in the NHL since the 2017-18 season and while he wasn't officially retired, there was always a pretty good indication that he wouldn't be back in the National Hockey League after he had returned home to Kladno. Nevertheless, Dubas and the Pens will do right by him this season, just 3 days after his 52nd birthday.
| POLL | ||
NOVEMBRE 10 | 267 ANSWERS Kyle Dubas officially doing something in Pittsburgh that should have been done a long time ago Are you surprised that Jaromir Jagr's #68 was never retired in Pittsburgh? | ||
| Yes, very surprised | 165 | 61.8 % |
| Not surprised - he wasn't even retired | 76 | 28.5 % |
| Retiring jersey numbers is dumb | 26 | 9.7 % |
| List of polls | ||
