Jaromir Jagr has a blog on the Internet. It’s pretty neat. He writes it in his native tongue and it’s translated to English, so the phrasing can be a bit funny sometimes. But as we’ve come to learn with translations, he’s not delivering this to a North American audience, so perhaps he lets his guard down a little bit. We’ll call that Kimmo Timonen syndrome.
Anyway, Jagr’s most recent post was pretty enlightening. He talked about Sidney Crosby, which will likely grab the headlines on the blogs all across the web (and when the newspapers get wind of this about 48 hours late), but there’s much more in here about how he approaches the postseason and how he’s feeling at this point in a long season.
We’ll start on Crosby, just to get it out of the way:
There is a lot of talk now about Sidney Crosby and what he’s been doing on the ice. Some give it a lot of thought, others less. And I am a guy who does not care at all, I take no notice. He does harm only to himself. But every man is different, perhaps this helps him get into the game and play better.
But I don’t want to add any more comments; I really take no notice of it.
On the emotion of the postseason:
And, all in all, I take it without any emotions. I try not to be provoked by anything. It is not good to be too much up or too much down, to be too elated or too depressed. At least, this is how it works with me. I concentrate only on things I can control, and I want my psyche to be balanced all the time. No matter which way the wind blows, one must stay cool. There’s no other way. Otherwise I’d laugh twenty times and weep ten times in every game …
On how he’s barely noticed the start of the postseason:
As to me, I don’t follow how many points I have collected or whether I succeeded in delivering a nice pass. I simply try to play my best game, that’s all. Moreover, I didn’t spend so much time on the ice because of the penalties. In fact, I hardly realize we play a playoff round at all.
But I’m not complaining. On the contrary, I believe this can in fact help me if our team qualifies for the next round. As a matter of fact, I was always beaten and spent after the first four playoff games, but it is different now. As I said, it hardly comes to my mind the playoffs have already begun.
There are plenty more goodies over here in this post. I’d absolutely recommend going over and reading the entire thing.
