How Jaromir Jagr defined 1990s culture in Pittsburgh

The Pittsburgh Penguins of the early 1990s were larger than life, a great team that should have won more than two championships. Eight of the 20 players who dressed the night the Penguins won the Stanley Cup for the first time, on May 25, 1991, in Minnesota, are already in the Hockey Hall of Fame. The coach and general manager of those teams are also in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

It's fitting, then, that Jaromir Jagr will one day be the ninth player from that team to show his bust in Toronto.

You can't say the '90s without the number nine, and you can't discuss '90s culture in Pittsburgh without Jagr.

“The players were parking in this outdoor lot at the Civic Arena at the time,” said former Penguins teammate Rick Tocchet. “And when Jags was walking to his car, I mean, the teenagers standing there were going crazy. He had the mullet going. All '90s clothes. It was like the Beatles had shown up.”

Oh, the mullet. Many players showed off mullets long ago, but few could proudly show off hair of Jagr's caliber.

For almost his entire career in Pittsburgh — which lasted from 1990 to 2001 — Jagr wore a mullet. While the mullet was more of an '80s phenomenon in the United States, fashion in Pittsburgh is historically a decade behind. So he was a Pittsburgher from the beginning, a teenager who grew up in a communist country and who somehow belonged from the beginning.

“Part of his appeal was his overall appearance,” said Paul Steigerwald, the longtime Penguins announcer who immediately introduced Jagr to Pittsburgh in 1990, just as he had done for Mario Lemieux in 1984.

“Jagr looked like a character from 'Thor' when he showed up in Pittsburgh. He looked very handsome, but he was also exotic. He was some kind of mythical, ancient being. We had never seen anyone who looked like him, especially when we were 18. People immediately fell in love with him, in no time.”

Jagr arrived in Pittsburgh in the summer of 1990, speaking almost no English. Like many in his position, he turned to 1990s television to learn the language.

In particular, Jagr watched 'Married… With Children' and 'Saved by the Bell'.

A few years into his career, a celebrity hockey game took place at the Civic Arena after a Penguins game. Mark-Paul Gosselaar, who played Zack Morris in “Saved by the Bell,” was among the participants.

After the Penguins game, Jagr was informed of this.

“I can still hear him yelling about it in the locker room,” said Mark Madden, the Pittsburgh radio host who covered the Penguins for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at the time. “He kept yelling at Petr Nedved to hurry up and get dressed so they could go watch Zack Morris play hockey. He was rightly excited about it. I don't think I've ever seen him so happy.”

Jagr's excitement at seeing a '90s teen idol paled in comparison to the excitement Pittsburgh showed towards its own teen idol.

Teenage boys in Pittsburgh tried to grow their hair as beautifully as Jagr's. Few succeeded, but many tried. Teenage girls in Pittsburgh tried dating Jagr. Many have succeeded.

“He was the ultimate rock star,” Tocchet said. “I've never seen young people fall in love with a player like him.”

When it became common knowledge that Jagr had a sweet tooth for Kit Kat bars, the Penguins suddenly had a problem. Thousands upon thousands of Kit Kats arrived at Civic Arena by mail.

“Oh my God, the Kit Kat bars,” said former Penguins teammate Kevin Stevens, laughing.

Jagr's preference for them – and his fans' reaction to it – forced the voice of the Penguins, Mike Lange, to make an announcement.

“I had to announce during a game that people had to stop sending Kit Kat bars to the arena,” Lange said. “It had gotten out of hand.”

This also applied to Jagr's driving. While the number remains unclear, Jagr racked up a huge number of speeding tickets during his first two years in Pittsburgh. Small details such as speed limits were not of great importance to him.

The speeding tickets became so frequent that Jagr was briefly stripped of his driver's license during the 1992 postseason, forcing Lemieux to arrange transportation to and from games.

It's a good thing Jagr got to go to those play-offs. Then he became a star on the ice. Off the ice, he had been that way for a few years.

Those penguins were blessed with all-time greats, and perhaps the only thing more remarkable than their talent was the magnitude of their personalities. For all of Lemieux's shyness, his teammates were brash and well-liked in Pittsburgh. Stevens made his famous prediction when the Penguins were trailing the Bruins in the 1991 Wales Conference final. Phil Bourque talked about “partying on the river all summer” with the Stanley Cup, and then did just that. Ulf Samuelsson was perhaps the loudest of the bunch.

But then there was Jagr, who had perhaps the greatest personality of them all.

He simply took over interviews after the Penguins won the playoff series in 1991 and 1992, taking microphones from reporters and cutting a monologue on live television.

His comments in Chicago after the Penguins defeated the Blackhawks to win the Stanley Cup in 1992 became the stuff of Pittsburgh legend. Lange's “Elvis just left the building” call after Penguins won was not lost on Jagr at the time.

He was asked about the parade that would take place in Pittsburgh to commemorate the victory.

“I want to see some pretty girls,” he replied. 'I don't care about Elvis. Just beautiful girls. Hello.”

As Jagr's greatness grew in the mid-1990s, so did Jagr's marketing.

Kids in Pittsburgh didn't just eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. Rather, it had to be Jaromir Jagr peanut butter.

Jagr was not particularly mature at the time. He didn't have to be. The Penguins had a lot of adults, and Jagr's childish nature only made him more popular in Pittsburgh, especially among the Penguins' growing, young fan base.

Lemieux could have been the king, and he was. Jagr was the prince. He regularly appeared on local TV stations to provide weather reports. He did the same thing on the WDVE morning radio show. He was the class clown, but he was also smarter than anyone else in the class. There was laughter and laughter, and everyone swooned.

“It was like when Pierre Larouche showed up in Pittsburgh,” Lange said. “It was like when Paul Coffey showed up. But I think it was even bigger with Jaromir. You've never seen people fall so much in love with someone.”

Jagr wore denim jackets, was obsessed with popular TV shows and loved grunge music. Perhaps what made him unique was that he came from a far away land with a very different culture, yet was very American from the start.

Even before Jagr arrived in Pittsburgh, he had a photo of Ronald Reagan in his wallet. For him, America was the promised land.

Pittsburgh quickly became his playground and he gained a cultural influence with few peers in the sports world.

“I saw it the first time I took him to the mall,” Steigerwald said. “He was just like every other kid in that mall. He was just bigger, stronger, had better hair and could play better hockey. He was just so cool. Everyone wanted to be like him.”

Of course there was only one of him.

“He had the whole city wrapped around his finger,” Stevens said. “A heartbreaker at the age of 18. It was something to see. People wanted to be around him and be like him.”

(Photo: Al Messerschmidt / Associated Press)