Legend

This grizzled, gray-bearded veteran hockey player needs no introduction. That's Czech hockey legend Jaromir Jagr playing for the club he owns, the Kladno Knights, in their Extraliga game yesterday. They faced HC Sparta Praha in this specific game, but it wasn't the team or players that were special in this contest. As you may have heard, Jaromir Jagr decided to move the game to a larger arena in order to raise funds to help refugees from Ukraine who are fleeing the battle being waged within the country. That game happened Tuesday inside the O2 Arena in Prague which just happens to be the second-largest ice hockey rink in Europe and seats 17,383 hockey fans. It wasn't a sellout at the arena, but the game still did an exceptional job in raising funds for many people who need some help at this time!

The O2 Arena is normally where HC Sparta Praha plays, and Jagr reached out to the club to ask them if they could host the season-ending game for Kladno where Jagr would pay for all the expenses so that any and all ticket sales would go towards helping the Ukrainian refugees who are fleeing their country. According to Vit Rakusan, Minister of the Interior of the Czech Republic, more than 100,000 refugees have crossed the border into Czechia for safety, so the money raised will certainly help those people as they escape the atrocities happening inside the Ukraine borders.

Jagr reached out to NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman to see if the NHL would throw him an assist in this effort, and the NHL came through with a $68,000 donation to give a big monetary boost to the cause. Now, Jagr just needed fans to show up and buy tickets for the game or buy a virtual ticket to contribute to the fundraising effort.

At the end of the day, 14,512 fans piled into O2 Arena for the game where they saw the visiting HC Sparta Praha squad, playing in their home rink, defeat the Kladno Knights 4-1 on this day. The score really didn't matted between these two teams, though, as the money collected to aid Ukrainian refugees was the real goal. And in that vein, the Czechs really showed their hearts as they raised $160,000 to help the humanitarian efforts in giving refuge to the Ukrainians who came to Czechia for safety!

"I feel so sad when I see people fleeing and taking just one bag with them," Jagr said about the refugees. "Mothers and kids part with their dads as the dads go fight and have no idea if they ever come back. The only thing they hope for is that the world will take care about their wives and children."

"I would like to thank everybody who participated and helped," Jagr added. "The final score shows one team that won and the other team that lost the game, but this is a secondary thing. I think today, everybody won."

Love him or hate him, you have to respect what Jaromir Jagr did on Tuesday in raising $160,000 for Ukrainian refugees. HC Sparta Praha moved comfortably into the third-place in the Czech Extraliga with the 4-1 win while Kladno sits in 14th-place in the 15-team league, but no one is talking about the standings today after the teams worked together to pull off a massive win, as Jagr said, for everyone.

"Everyone understood that it was for Ukraine," he told Czech reporters, and that's really all that matters. While Jagr's Kladno team will have a long, hard road ahead of them in terms of avoiding relegation. However, that adversity is nothing compared with what people from Ukraine are experiencing, and the $160,000 that Jagr helped raise only further cements his status as a legend not only in Czechia, but perhaps in Ukraine as well!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!