Jaromir Jagr not concerned with numbers

The points are not the point.
Jaromir Jagr has 1,887 points now, tied with Mark Messier for second-most in NHL history, after his three assists in the Florida Panthers' 4-3 shootout win against the Buffalo Sabres on Tuesday.
One more point, and he will have more than Messier, more than Gordie Howe (1,850), more than Ron Francis (1,798), more than Marcel Dionne (1,771), more than Steve Yzerman (1,755) and more than Mario Lemieux (1,723).

One more point, and he will have more than every other player in almost 100 years of the NHL except one, the Great One, Wayne Gretzky (2,857), whose absurd total might be out of reach forever.
He has more goals (755) than everyone but Gretzky (894) and Howe (801) too.
But Jagr did not return to the NHL at 39 after three seasons in Siberia to pile up more points. He did not work out long after games with weighted vests and skate on his own late at night to raise his ranking in the record book. He is not still going at 44 to amass numbers, except ice time and games played.

"He's not just playing because of who he is," former teammate Stephane Robidas once said. "He plays because he can still play and because he loves it. … You don't feel as good some days, and you see him walk in the locker room and he's smiling, and life is beautiful."
Jagr has undergone a beautiful metamorphosis.
He left the NHL in 2008 after 17 seasons with the Pittsburgh Penguins, Washington Capitals and New York Rangers, already a lock for the Hockey Hall of Fame having won the Stanley Cup twice, the Art Ross Trophy as scoring champion five times and the Hart Trophy as most valuable player once. He didn't have to come back from Omsk of the Kontinental Hockey League. He had nothing left to prove.
When he did come back in 2011, he transformed from superstar to workhorse, wise man and hockey vagabond. He became beloved in ways he never was before, for his work ethic, for teaching the whippersnappers a thing or two, for bouncing from the Philadelphia Flyers to the Dallas Stars to the Boston Bruins to the New Jersey Devils to the Panthers and embracing it.
The Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy often goes to the comeback player of the year, but it is supposed to go to the player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey. After last season, it went to Jagr.

"When he came into Pittsburgh, he dazzled us with his power and his skill and his overall game, and later on in his career, he's kind of inspired us with his passion and dedication," Messier said. "He's played long enough in my mind to really understand the significance of what the game means to him as a person and a player. The only way you can play and do what he's doing now is to make sure you're putting in the time with your conditioning and take care of yourself and really have a deep passion for the game."
Wondering what Jagr's numbers would be had he never left the NHL misses the point.
The NHL leaderboard is skewed by all kinds of things: time in other leagues, health problems, labor battles. Where would, say, Howe and Bobby Hull be had they stayed in the NHL and not played so long in the World Hockey Association? Where would, say, Lemieux and Bobby Orr be had they stayed healthy? Where would so many, including Jagr, be if not for work stoppages that erased almost two seasons' worth of games over 1994-95, 2004-05 and 2012-13?
"Everybody knows that you cannot just take the time you miss and somehow say, 'Oh, yeah, I would do this,'" Jagr once said. "You never know what would happen if I stay here. So maybe I wouldn't be playing right now, or maybe I would be even better. It plays with the brain. I don't want to do it right now. I just did whatever I felt was right for me in that situation. In one way, it helped me, because I kind of regrouped myself mentally. It was a change. I probably needed a change. I played less games there. I played in different league. When I came back, mentally I was probably more excited about the NHL."

The points are a byproduct of talent and longevity, evolution and passion, and a testament to them. The point is to play, to love what you do each day and see what it adds up to in the end. For Jagr, it has added up to 1,887 and counting.
"You play [as long as] you love the game, when you love it, when you want to be with that game," Jagr once said. "It's like a marriage, I think. Would you have imagined you're going to stay with your wife that long? Well, you love her. You're going to stay with her as long as you can. … It's the same thing with hockey for me. I just love the game."