Back Stories: Statistically Speaking

 

"Jaromir played in both the world junior and senior championships. He led Kladno in goals and points and was the first Czech player to attend an NHL draft without having to defect. He was the fifth player drafted in 1990. Even though Jaromir was the youngest to suit up for an NHL game this season, he scored three game-winning goals (three of the team's five at that point) in Pittsburgh's first 12 games. Pittsburgh moved the left-handed shot to right wing. Jaromir's an accurate shooter, converting 21 percent of his chances in the early going."

The Jagr story is a good one. Pro Set doesn't really paint the whole picture here with the line about not defecting because it wasn't really that simple. In a nutshell, Jaromir left Czechoslovakia to join the Penguins after being drafted but failed to notify the Czech hockey officials of his sudden departure. He was already under contract to play with the Poldi Kladno team and had one year remaining on that deal. But seeing that he signed that deal before he was 18, the Penguins asked the NHL to nullify the contract so he could be signed to the NHL. It's a great story that I'll leave for a later date.

Everyone has seen this card by now. Probably 100 times at least. You may even own 100 of these. As we all know, there's no shortage of 1990-91 Pro Set hockey cards in the world. Most collector's know that 1990-91 Pro Set was riddled with spelling mistakes, errors, misprints, and printing defects. The Jaromir Jagr rookie card is no exception to that phenomenon. 

The most common version of this card shows an alignment issue on the back in the stat box toward the top of the card. Where it lists the stat headers of GP, G, A PTS, PIM, the line is shifted to the left, causing the numbers below to be skewed. The vast majority of the Jagr RC's you find out in the wild will display the back this way. The more "rare", if you want to call it that, version is the corrected, aligned version you see here. I probably have at least a dozen of the error version of the card but for some reason, have never pinned down the corrected copy. This card arrived in a #mailday from my pal John Malone (@BugsyMalone_17)...along with a host of other fanciful goodies I'll probably also use for these posts.

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