from Tom Gulitti of Fire & Ice,

I’ve left multiple telephone and email messages for Jagr’s agent, Petr Svoboda, over the last couple of weeks and over the last few days, but he has not responded. Devils GM Lou Lamoriello has given his usual, “I don’t comment” on whether he’s interested or not interested in any player not from his team. I’ve had him tell me after the fact that he was not involved in trying to sign a free agent that signed with another team—that was the case with Vincent Lecavalier—but can’t recall a time he said anything like that when the player was still in play.

I also can’t recall a time when he said he was interested in signing a specific free agent that wasn’t previously under contract with his team.

I wish I could be more helpful, but in this case, with this story, I can’t. I did not see Jagr at Prudential Center when he was supposedly there on Thursday and no one else that I talked to there claimed to have seen him, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t there at some point.

I’ve spoken to a couple of people from the U.S. who know Jagr pretty well but haven’t spoken to him in a few weeks and they didn’t think the reports about him and the Devils made any sense. That doesn’t mean they’re not true either.

Any reports from North American news outlets concerning Jagr and the Devils have been based on the reports from the Czech Republic.

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