When Jaromír Jágr began his NHL career in 1990, the Czech league in its current iteration did not exist, because the Czech Republic did not exist.
More than 32 years after debuting for the Pittsburgh Penguins, extraordinary circumstances have landed Jágr back on the ice, continuing an endless career that has given him a Hockey Reference page spanning decades.
Jágr owns Rytíu0159i Kladno, a team in the Czech Extraliga for which he played as a 17-year-old in the 1990 season and then again during the 1995 NHL lockout. With the club decimated by illness, Jágr—six weeks shy of his 51st birthday—has returned to the ice for his hometown team for the first time in 28 years.