Jagr is an all time great. I understand the arguments against having #68 retired since he was only here for 4 years, but the complete lack of recognition he has gotten from the franchise that loves to tout its history is bizarre.
Yeah, he was. In Pittsburgh. He was only here for three and a half seasons, though. Was he good? Yeah, especially in 05/06, but in terms of games played, Jagr spent less than 16% of his career in a Rangers sweater. He scored fewer than 17% of his career points in a Rangers sweater. In short, in terms of individual play, he was an all-time great mostly in other cities (primarily Pittsburgh). In terms of team success, the Rangers got swept in round 1 once, and dominated in round 2 twice while Jagr was here. They were never even close to a Cup. In contrast, Messier played nearly 40% of his career games with the Rangers, scoring nearly 37% of his career points with the Rangers. He took the team to the 2nd round of the playoffs 3 times, the Eastern Conference Finals once, and won the Stanley Cup once.
Frankly, if you remove the 1994 Cup, Messier is even a MAYBE as far as getting his number retired, and even with the Cup removed, he has a much better case than Jagr. If anything Jagr has more in common with Gretzky's Rangers tenure, and I wouldn't agree with individually retiring Gretzky's number at MSG either.
I really liked Jagr when he was here, but if we're going to start retiring numbers for players who did well for a couple of years and didn't win anything, then we're going to rapidly run out of numbers to assign to current players.