Ageless Wonder Jaromir Jagr Is the People's Champ

When us mere mortals dream of playing professional sports, our visions center on the highlights: the last-minute heroics, pulling your country's crest over your chest and raising that trophy so few have. We don't imagine the denouement: when the roar of the crowd dies down and we are left alone with our own mortality.

Depressing? Perhaps. But then, like a flash of lightning coming down the wing, there is 43-year-old Jaromir Jagr. Hardened by his 22 seasons in the NHL (and a few more in the KHL, to boot) it's impossible now to get Jagr off the puck. He's the oldest current player in the NHL by a landslide, leads the Florida Panthers in scoring, and last weekend passed Marcel Dionne for fourth place on the NHL's all-time goal-scoring list.

Consider other recent players who were still skating in the NHL at age 43: Claude Lemieux, Mark Recchi and Teemu Selanne. Lemieux mustered just one point in his NHL comeback attempt, Recchi netted a respectable 48 points through his final 81-game season and Selanne had 27 points in his final 64-game campaign.

Jagr, somehow, is projected to finish the season with 62 points. It's quite possible that in a few months time we'll be talking about Jagr passing Brett Hull for third place in career goals. Jagr is sitting nine behind Hull, and perhaps an unattainable 68 from becoming the third player in history to reach the 800-goal mark for his career (Gordie Howe has 801 and Wayne Gretzky tops the list at 894).

When we speak of Jagr now, it's in universal reverence, but not because of his many accolades—the most points ever by a European player, an Olympic gold medal, five Art Ross Trophies, a Hart Trophy and two Stanley Cups. Most of those occurred long ago, some before today's generation of young hockey fans were even born.

We revere him because he is everything we want to be: not bound by past achievements and still producing well past what should have been his expiration date. Every day is not a gift for Jagr. Every day is a grind. We love him not because of the points but because he is still with us. Don't let his recent Tweet imploring fans not to vote for him in the upcoming NHL All-Star Game fool you: he is not too old. And don't worry, Jaromir, we know you don't want to die yet. Mainly because we are convinced you will never leave us.

He laughs off losing his front teeth and laments putting on extra holiday weight, as we all do. If only we could all be as forgiving as he is.

Great athletes come and go. We watch them rise, laud them when they're at their peak and deride them for holding on one second too long or nod in mourning when their bodies are claimed by injuries. Not to worry, though—there's always another young phenom waiting in the wings.

We've seen it this season with Sidney Crosby. Long thought of as the best player in the world, he's been panned so far for not being, well, Sidney Crosby. Eventually Crosby's time in the limelight will end, and that's fine. He fortified himself in the public conscience of hockey fans with his heroics in 2010, so at any point now it'll be fair to do our best James Cromwell: "That'll do, Sid. That'll do."

Never will that happen with Jagr. Or, never will we want to have to say those words to the 6'2" winger, who will be remembered not only for his exceptional play but also for the intoxicating smile busting out of the upper corner of his lip and curly mullet flowing out from underneath his bucket.

Crosby is the 2010 Canadian Olympic gold medal: the memory ceases to exist without him. But the great Pittsburgh Penguins teams of the early 1990s, the 1998 gold for the Czech Republic—those were not Jagr's and Jagr's alone. He didn't score during the semi-final or final and was stopped during the shootout semi-final versus Canada. What Jagr now owns is the one thing we are all trying to get the best of: time.

And Jagr, like all of us, is flawed. He's had reported gambling debts in the hundreds of thousands. But this year, we celebrated Jagr even when some would say his decisions have been questionable. When an 18-year-old model tried to blackmail him by threatening to post a photo of them in bed together, his response was simple: "I don't care." In a world that threatens to muzzle each and every one of us and force us to conform, Jagr is Jagr. He is the person so many of us want to be.

We want more out of life, more hours out of the day, more chances to prove who we are. They don't always come, but so many of us try. Like Jagr, we always want to prove our worth and it gets all the more difficult with age. But Jagr does it. We don't watch him and say, "Oh, he can't keep this up, dude's a ticking time bomb," because he's proven that he can.

Since returning from the KHL for the 2011-12 season, Jagr has scored 86 goals and counting, and is on pace to notch the 19th 20-goal season of his career. He is both the model of consistency and someone who has adapted to a number of situations. Jagr has played with five different NHL teams since 2011 and has looked at home in nearly every uniform.

The days of employees staying at one job throughout their entire career and retiring after having risen up the ranks are all but done for: humans are forced to move, work in situations we're not always comfortable with and do the best with what we have. This is Jaromir Jagr.

Jagr will soon pass Selanne as the fifth-oldest position player to ever play in an NHL regular-season game. And while their points per game totals are comparable, Selanne's retirement was pronounced. It was a celebrated affair—a legend stepping away.

It looks doubtful that will ever happen to Jagr. Even in the final year of his contract, we want to believe there is still more for Jagr. Because, for the sake of humanity, there has to be.