Every time Jaromír Jágr scores a goal or records a point, he becomes the oldest player ever to do so in a professional hockey league. He did so on Sunday, scoring on the power play just 2:30 into Rytíři Kladno’s somewhat surprising 6-2 road victory over fourth-place BK Mladá Boleslav in Czech Extraliga action. Jágr is 52 years, nine months and 23 days old.

It was only Jágr’s second goal of the season in only his 14th game – barely more than half that his team has played. That’s a far cry from what he hoped last summer, when he went into full-on off-season training mode for one final season and declared his intention to play every one of Kladno’s games.

However, the 52-year-old overdid it with the training and tore a hamstring in mid-August. He managed to recover in time to play the team’s regular-season opener on Sept. 18, recording an assist in a 5-1 loss to Dynamo Pardubice. Then came a goal in the second game, a 4-2 win over Sparta Prague.

Then came eight straight games without a point, despite playing at least 11 minutes each game. Jágr recorded an assist on Oct. 13 against HC Olomouc, but soon after, he was saddled with some health issues – reportedly Covid and whooping cough – and missed 12 games. Kladno one only one of those 12 before he returned on Friday, a 4-1 home loss to Vítkovice. 

Still, he’s well on pace to eclipse last season, when he played only 15 regular-season games, scored no goals and recorded four assists. After not playing for more than two months, injuries forced him to return to the lineup for three games in a promotion-relegation series in April against VHK Vsetín, which Kladno won to stay in the Extraliga. In typical Jágr fashion, his return to the lineup was kept a secret until the last possible moment, and then he recorded a goal and an assist in his first game back.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1-h3ONdoUo[/embed]

Despite Sunday’s win, Kladno still sits last in the Extraliga standings with 27 points in 26 games – the exact midpoint of the team’s regular-season schedule. If that’s where Kladno continues to sit after its 52nd game, then it will again have to win a series against the champion of Czech hockey’s second-tier league – perhaps Vsetín again – to remain in the league. Is that where Jágr will play his last career games?