From the sound of the European styled boombox, practice was over for the Washington Capitals. An hour or so of hard work on ice had fired their emotions, shook their bones, stoked their souls ... "Darling, can't you hear me, SOS! ... Darling, nothing else can save me, SOS!"

	Jagr's final days with Lemeiux and the Penguins were hardly happy ones.

All Capitals on the scene undulated in unison. Heads banging to the 300-watt power of ABBA, apparently a sign of a happy and healthy hockey locker room. Then the darkness rolled in.

Jaromir Jagr strolled across the room, seemingly perplexed by the sound. This was his room now, and he had to be wondering what was bouncing off its walls. One look at this jewel of a CD and Jagr broke out into a guttural laugh, the frown and the fog once again lifted.

Saved? By all appearances, Jagr certainly seems like a different player from the free-agent star who toiled largely in frustration last season. But the question remains: Can Jagr do what he was brought to Washington for -- make the Capitalsa different team?

"I think we have a much deeper team now," said longtime Capitals star Peter Bondra. "We have more speed and we have some good young players. It's a really good combination. The game is much more faster for us than in the past."

That's precisely what owner Ted Leonsis thought he was buying when he traded a package of prospects to Pittsburgh for Jagr two summers ago, then handed him a seven-year, $77 million contract, with an option year. But as so many songwriters have penned over the years, money can't buy you love.

"A lot of stuff has changed here from last year," said Jagr, trying hard to make himself heard above the sailing story of the Dancing Queen. "The players here are more competitive. There were a lot of trades. More young guys are in the dressing room. I think that as far as the atmosphere in the dressing room, it's a lot better than it was before."

Jagr stopped short of explanation. He would not lay blame or name names. But he conceded that making the adjustment from 11-year icon of the Pittsburgh Penguins to first-year bonus baby in a veteran Capitals locker room was more difficult than he imagined.

Almost from the start, stories of his problems in the locker room surfaced. And Jagr's performance on the ice did nothing to deter the talk. The Capitals, just four years removed from an appearance in the Stanley Cup finals and having lost in the first round of the playoffs the prior two years to Jagr and the Penguins, seemed to have the right combinations at work.

	JAGR'S CAREER STATISTICS
	Year	Team	GP	G	A	Pts
	90-91	Pittsburgh	80	27	30	57
	91-92	Pittsburgh	70	32	37	69
	92-93	Pittsburgh	81	34	60	94
	93-94	Pittsburgh	80	32	67	99
	94-95	Pittsburgh*	48	32	38	70
	95-96	Pittsburgh	82	62	87	149
	96-97	Pittsburgh	63	47	48	95
	97-98	Pittsburgh*	77	35	67	102
	98-99	Pittsburgh*	81	44	83	127
	99-00	Pittsburgh*	63	42	54	96
	00-01	Pittsburgh*	81	52	69	121
	01-02	Washington	69	31	48	79
	* - scoring titles

An owner in Leonsis interested in winning more than cost. Veteran stars like Adam Oates, Sergei Gonchar and Bondra who had been there for the long haul. A taskmaster coach in Ron Wilson. A goalie in Olaf Kolzig who was still considered one of the premier netminders in the league. Into this locker room stepped the best player from the team that historically tormented them the most.

How couldn't it work?

"You have to adjust first," Jagr said with a third-person perspective. "If you don't adjust you're not going to be able to play the same game that you played in Pittsburgh. You can't, because here you have to be five guys working together in the same way. Not just one guy doing what you want."

Maybe that's exactly what went wrong. Jagr, who turned 30 as the season melted before him, wound up leading the Capitals in scoring as expected. But his 31 goals were his lowest total since his rookie season of 1990-91, and his 79 points represented his fourth-lowest output ever (including the labor-abbreviated 1994-95 season).

What's more, the Capitals were out of the Southeast Division race rather early. They finished 36-33-11-2, missing the playoffs for the second time since the 1998 finals, despite preseason predictions of a return to glory.

Oates, who didn't seem to click personally with Jagr, was traded to Philadelphia just prior to the deadline. Wilson was dismissed. Leonsis had to be miffed. General Manager George McPhee had to find another answer.

So in came another free agent from Pittsburgh -- Robert Lang, like Jagr a native of the Czech Republic and perhaps a person who could help Jagr reconnect with past triumphs and his own dazzling game.

"Robert played with him in the past, so I think Jags may be more comfortable now," said Bondra. "This year, he looks like he's more relaxed and having more fun out there than he did last year."

Asked what Lang's presence meant to him, a smile crept across Jagr's face as he said, "That (bleep) ... nobody wanted to room with him, so I guess I had to."

As much as Lang's presence may have increased Jagr's comfort level this season, the former Penguins captain points out last season would have been difficult no matter how many ex-teammates surrounded him.

"It's tough for everybody to make a change like that," said Jagr. "Anybody who played for one team for such a long time, and especially there. It's not like I was going from a normal team to this team, you know?"

	“	It's tough for everybody to make a change like that. Anybody who played for one team for such a long time, and especially there. It's not like I was going from a normal team to this team, you know? ”
		— Jaromir Jagr

The end of Jagr's tenure with the Penguins was more than merely painful. It reflected badly on him. Mario Lemieux went from the owner's suite back to the players' digs in part an effort to make Jagr more comfortable. GM Craig Patrick went and hired legendary Czech coach Ivan Hlinka to try to carve a system more attuned to Jagr's game. That move backfired badly, with Jagr openly warring with the coach when Lemieux made the decision to come out of retirement and try to decide which one went first. Out went Hlinka ... then Jagr. With a new contract on the horizon, he simply was no longer a financial fit in Pittsburgh. But money can't buy you ...

"When you leave Pittsburgh after that many years," a suddenly earnest Jagr said, "wherever you go it's just going to be so very different. I don't know how to explain it, but all the stuff in the dressing room and around the ice there, it's just so ... free. I would see no rules, as long as you played hard. Everybody else in the league is more structured than they are."

From the free-form Penguins to Wilson's old-era policies in Washington. No wonder it didn't work.

"He was expected to be the guy and it's not like he didn't want to be the guy," new Capitals coach Bruce Cassidy said of Jagr. "It's just tough to do that when you're coming from a dressing room with Mario in it that maybe is a little looser than most, and then to come here where he doesn't know how things are. So you get unsure, and if you're unsure of things it makes it tougher to get to know people.

"You still want him to the go-to guy here, but you don't want him to get down on himself when he's not. I told him that he doesn't have to be the guy every night. He puts a lot of pressure on himself and I told him that I think he can deflect a bit of that. We can still win games when he has an average night."

Whether it's his own laid-back persona or a management mandate, Cassidy seems to have brought a sense of tranquility.

"It might have been an issue, him coming here as the highest-paid guy and being kind of an outsider," said Cassidy. "Jags is an outgoing guy. He's reserved around a lot of people and the media, but once you get to know him you find out he's a fun guy. Maybe he just didn't want to rock the boat. They did things the Capitals way and he was used to the Pittsburgh way. We're trying to maybe integrate the two of them now."

Whatever works -- Jagr's six goals and 10 points puts him among the league leaders. And despite a horrendous schedule that has them on the road for eight games in October, the Capitalsare off to a 4-3-1 start as they prepared to close the road trip by returning to Pittsburgh, the very place that Jagr and Lang first learned how to be free.

"It's really loose there," Lang said. "You're going to have a certain system, but it's a lot looser. I would say now here it's a lot like that, too. But I'm sure last year was a lot different, just from what I've heard."

Ah, but why revisit the past when the locker room air in Washington is finally so unfettered? So far, there's been no reason to turn down the sound.

Rob Parent of the Delaware County (Pa.) Times is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.