Jaromir Jagr’s contract no longer contains a team option for next season, meaning that the current agreement under which he would earn $8.36M for 2008-09 will be extended only if he hits the performance triggers included in the deal, The Post has learned.
That means that unless Jagr scores 40 goals or records 84 points while the Rangers win a playoff round in April, or unless he wins the Hart Trophy, Art Ross Trophy or Conn Smythe Trophy, a) No. 68 will be eligible to become an unrestricted free agent on July 1; and, b) beginning next season the Blueshirts will no longer be entitled to any cap discount on their captain.
If the current Jagr contract (that he signed with Washington in October of 2001) is not automatically extended, the Rangers and No. 68 could negotiate a new deal for next year before he gets to the open market. Jagr, who will turn 36 on Feb. 15, has said time and time again that he has no interest at all in playing for any NHL team other than the Rangers.
Sources with access to the contract told The Post yesterday that the Rangers renounced the team-option on July 28, 2005, six days after the current CBA was ratified. A source with knowledge of management’s decision-making process said that the team had essentially no other choice given the cap ramifications of the alternative.
The Post has learned that had the Rangers not renounced the option prior to the opening of the 2005-06, first post-lockout season, the full value of the 2008-09 option year would have been added to the contract as a fixed year, and thus would have increased Jagr’s cap charge to approximately $5.8M, rather than the $4.94M the Blueshirts have been assessed. That would have taken place even if the Rangers had never actually exercised the option.
Additionally, the Rangers would have been hit with the full $8.36M cap-charge for next season by hypothetically exercising the option, even though Washington would have continued to pay its portion of Jagr’s salary. The only way for the Rangers to continue to reap their current cap discount into next season would be for Jagr to hit any one of his triggers. The team, by the way, had every reason to expect that he would do so.
Jagr should have hit one of his triggers in 2005-06 by winning the Hart as MVP when he first “guaranteed” that the Rangers would end their seven-season playoff drought and then carried the club into the tournament with a twin franchise-record setting 54-goal, 123-point season. But Jagr was a victim of injustice in the balloting and finished second to Joe Thornton, whom the Bruins traded to San Jose in November of that season.
Entering this season, there was every reason to believe that Jagr, who had 96 points a year ago, would register his 84 points and thus automatically extend the deal with a playoff-round victory in April. But the captain has registered just 18 points (5-13) in 24 games and is on an inconceivable career-worst 62-point pace as the Blueshirts prepare for Thursday’s Garden match against the Islanders.
Hence, the attention to the team option clause that was a part of the contract the Rangers inherited upon dealing for Jagr on Jan. 23, 2004, but no longer exists.