Flyers GM Paul Holmgren was surprised when Jaromir Jagr decided to return to the NHL after a three-year absence, and he chose to play in Philadelphia without demanding Ilya Kovalchuk money or the Liberty Bell.

So Holmgren probably wasn’t shocked when Jagr said Thursday that he’d like to sign a one-year extension for next season at a figure reasonable to both sides.

Jagr is earning $3.3 million this season, but he probably could get a lot more somewhere else. But he says he’s not interested.

“If it was just money, I wouldn’t be here. Can you buy happiness for two years?” Jagr asked reporters. “Are you going to take a risk to go somewhere else and not be happy? I want to be happy. I want to come to work and be happy.

“There’s a lot of places guys don’t like each other and have to come to (the rink) because that is their job. I don’t want that at my stage. If it were about money, I wouldn’t have come here when I could have made three times more in Russia and play 50 games.”

Devils winger Petr Sykora says he is not close friends with Jagr.

They played 40 games together when the two were with the Rangers in 2005-06, as well as the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City and the 2004 and ’05 world championships for the Czech Republic. But he has a good idea what drives Jagr.

“I think he’s proud of himself that he’s proving he can still play at this level and do really well after missing three years,” Sykora said.

“He’s very competitive, so of course he wants to win a Stanley Cup, too. I’m sure he picked a team where he felt he had the best chance to make it far.

“I think it’s that desire to play hockey at the highest level. Wake up in the morning, go to the rink and do your stuff. Be on that hockey schedule. It’s hard to explain, but when you don’t have it, you know you miss it. I think he’s doing great. I expect nothing less from him. I know how good he is. Maybe he’s not as fast, but when you play him with the right players I think he can play for a long time.”

Jagr would like another season in Philadelphia.

“If I play good? I don’t think it’s going to be a problem because, from my side, I’m happy,” he said. “I like this team too much. I don’t want to go anywhere.”

LOOSE LIPS

Ordinarily, when Rangers owner James Dolan opens his mouth in public it's as the lead singer for his band JD and the Straight Shot.

This week Dolan surprised everyone when he spoke out at a news conference after the Rangers’ victory over the Nashville Predators on Tuesday night.

“I’m very proud of the organization,” Dolan said. “I’m particularly proud of Mr. (Glen) Sather because all the way back to 2004 when things weren’t going so well and we had a lot of free agents here and we decided to basically re-do the strategy, Glen and I made a pact.

“I gave him something, which I won’t reveal today, but I gave him something to seal the pact. I said: ‘You can’t give it back to me until we win the Stanley Cup.’ And I think we’re pretty close to getting that thing back.”

If that put the pressure on John Tortorella, the head coach wasn’t having any of it.

“We just have to go about our business. I have my owner up here talking about a Stanley Cup. That’s a bunch of bull,” Tortorella said with a look on his face that suggested that he actually enjoyed Dolan’s comments. “We need to take one game at a time.”

Afterwards, there was more interest in finding out what Dolan gave Sather than in whether the Rangers can actually win the Cup.

With no championships in his 10 seasons as Rangers general manager, Sather has been given a lot of slack (and spending money) from Dolan. But there was certainly nothing wrong with the chairman of Cablevision heaping some praise on the GM for assembling what is a championship caliber team.

“For me it’s all about the system he built,” Dolan said of Sather. “Of course it’s great coaching, but it’s about the farm system, the scouting system and the development. Going with kids and sticking with that philosophy even at times when it didn’t look so good. So, I’m very proud of him and the organization.”

With good reason.

ETC.

The player draft conducted by the All-Star captains is better than the game. Already, Daniel Alfredsson is plotting his strategy against former teammate Zdeno Chara. "My first pick, if I get the first pick, will be (Ottawa Senators defenseman Erik) Karlsson," Alfredsson revealed. "I hope Chara doesn't hear this and he gets the first pick." If Chara did get the first pick and chose Karlsson, Alfredsson would be in trouble. "My kids will be very disappointed if I didn't pick Erik," he said. "And he's a pretty good player."

After Karlsson, Alfredsson would like to get fellow Swedes Henrik and Daniel Sedin. “I thought about it when I found out Chara was going to be the other captain,” Alfredsson said. “I don’t know if I should be smart and wait. I don’t know if (Chara) going to pick any Canucks with their history from last year.” With what has become the NHL’s best rivalry between the Boston Bruins and Vancouver Canucks, we’re guessing Chara won’t select the Sedins.

Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Brooks Orpik isn't very popular in Carolina ever since he broke Erik Cole's neck with a hit on Mar. 4, 2006. But Orpik added to his villainous reputation when delivered a big hit to Jeff Skinner in the neutral zone Tuesday night. No big deal, except it was Skinner's second game back after missing 16 games with a concussion. After going to the quiet room for observation, Skinner returned to the bench and the game. "If it's any other game, I wouldn't think too much about it," Skinner said. "But after everything that's gone on … I got up and I was fine. So that was a good thing."

The Carolina Hurricanes may be down and out for this season, but after starting 1-5-1 under new coach Kirk Muller, they were 7-7-2 in the next 16 games.

A seven-game losing streak may have severely hurt the chances of the Lightning to make the playoffs, but it apparently did not damage coach Guy Boucher’s job security. GM Steve Yzerman was annoyed when asked whether Boucher’s message was still getting through to his players. “The coach’s message is the farthest thing from the problem here,” Yzerman told the Tampa Bay Times. “There’s no point in anybody discussing the coach. We’ve got a great coach. He’s the same coach as last year. His message is work hard, be structured.” Yzerman called Boucher’s job security “a nonissue. I watch our team play. We play hard. We’re structured. Our guys are competing. We’ve got a great coach. He’ll learn from this experience and he’ll be an even better coach.”

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Is there a need for the NHL to make a rule requiring all players to wear helmets during the pregame warmup? Some teams already make it mandatory, but Taylor Hall's mishap last week put the issue on the front burner. The Edmonton Oilers winger, not wearing a helmet, slid into the boards and teammate Corey Potter stepped on his face. Hall needed 30 stitches. "I look like Frankenstein," Hall informed his mother in a phone call. Hall told the Edmonton Journal: "To be honest, I'm lucky I didn't get my eye taken out or my throat sliced. It didn't feel too bad at first. I really didn't feel much pain. I thought it was just a little cut, then the blood starting coming pretty bad."

Few players believe the rules will change. “It’s like trying to shut the barn door after the herd has left,” said Craig MacTavish, the last to play in the NHL without a helmet. “The league wants its players to be more identifiable.” Interestingly, MacTavish said he’d wear a helmet now because the game is faster and more dangerous. But the warmup? The Minnesota Wild's Cal Clutterbuck said: “It’s just like everything else, it’s an overreaction. The kid got stepped on, got some stitches. Guaranteed, he’ll be back soon. It doesn’t happen every day.”

The trade deadline is Feb. 27 and Minnesota GM Chuck Fletcher is trying to swing a deal to get his team back in the playoff picture. "I think I'm doing a disservice to our players if I'm not trying to give them the ammunition to make the playoffs," Fletcher told the Minnesota Star-Tribune. "But the way we're going now, one player is not going to all of a sudden turn everything around, too. We need to get back to what we were, and we need to become the team that we were earlier in the sense of being a team. We'll keep looking to upgrade the talent. We'll move whatever we have to move if it makes sense. Not everybody's untouchable. And certainly we have a lot of prospects we're not going to move, but there's assets we have that we can move to make our team better if we can find the right fit. It's not easy to just go out and get an impact player in January."

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

When he was hired as Devils coach, Pete DeBoer was intent on getting the team to score more goals without sacrificing defense. Goal differential is a significant stat in the NHL. Here are the best and worst:

Team, GF, GA, GD

Bruins, 160, 89, +71

Red Wings, 152, 107, +45

Canucks, 151, 117, +34

Blue Jackets , 110, 152, -42

Lightning, 126, 159, -33

Hurricanes, 124, 156, -32

(Through Thursday's games)

Source: NHL

Rich Chere: rchere@starledger.com; twitter.com/Ledger_NJDevils