My date of birth isn't right. I'm still a youngster... 5 years younger
Another week has gone by and I am yet again greeting you from the United States. This time I’m in a much better mood because our team in Dallas has started to thrive. I don't want to jinx it, but we have won three times in a row and understandably, I am very pleased with that. I just hope it lasts.
It took some time to build team chemistry, but now it seems that we have found our winning ways. Ever since the beginning of the season, I have been saying that our team is going to stand out by having a great fighting spirit. At each training session, you can see that we really are a team of bulldogs that won't give anybody anything for free which is obvious during practice and also during the games. It has become apparent that our style is based mainly on combativeness and great goalkeeping.
The people who watch our games could argue that we don’t play particularly beautiful hockey, but we really can’t afford to get in crazy shootouts like those that I experienced in the 1st round of last year’s playoffs when the Flyers were pitted against Pittsburgh. We can’t even think about playing games that could end up with results like 8-4 or 10-3. We have to focus on defense and good play across the boards.
I also want to mention the game in Edmonton briefly. We won 3-2 and I managed to score the winning goal in overtime, which is always nice. So, why am I writing about that? Because during the pre-game skate, I had noticed that there was a Kladno fan in the stands, wearing our Knights jersey (“Kladno Knights” or “Rytíři Kladno” is the team that Jagr owns in the Czech Republic – translator’s note). I was delighted when I saw him! I hope that I was able to please him at least a bit with our win, considering he traveled such a long way to get there. In case the game ended up with a different result, I guess I would have had to reimburse him for his travel expenses... Anyway, it's great that Knights can be seen around the world like that.
I’ve also noticed that there was some talk about the fact that I got into the top 10 of NHL all-time goalscorers. I don't think about it much, that’s more of a topic for the press. It’s certainly nice to get so high in the rankings, but as I’ve said a few times already - if I were obsessed with my stats, I would have never left the NHL for Russia. I lost three years there and it influenced those charts.
Back then, I just felt it was a good time to take a break from the NHL and when I made the decision, I already knew that I'd lose the opportunity to place somewhere very high in historical tables. I do know about my indirect competition with Teemu Selanne for the position of the best European goal scorer of all time, of course. Right now, I am ahead by 1 goal. I really only have one thing to say about this: It's needless to say that I'll be glad if I retain that lead, but you still have to consider the influence of my Russian break. If I didn't spend 3 years in the KHL, it would have been a whole different story...
Since I'm writing about age already, I have to mention that I’ll be 41 years old on the 15th February, at least officially. However, be careful! As I've already pointed out in my blog last year, this date of birth isn’t right. I have to reiterate - when I was just a boy, my father changed my documents to make me look 5 years older, so I could play with older kids. Therefore, it's not my 41st birthday and I’m going to be only 36 years old! So I'm still quite the youngster...
To get back on a bit of a more serious note… We have a challenging schedule ahead of us, 3 away games in 4 days. We're also flying to Calgary, where Roman Cervenka plays (Jagr and Cervenka were teammates in the KHL's Avangard Omsk for 2 years and they played together for Czech national team as well - translator's note), so I'm looking forward to seeing him. So far, he's done quite well and his entrance into the NHL has been successful. Everyone should know though that the fact that he's my friend doesn't change a thing and we'll still do our best to beat him.
Translated by Tomas Belonoznik and Caitlin Bonem
