In the NHL's 2007-08 season, Flames star Jarome Iginla was on the way to his second 50-goal campaign. And in this 2008 cover story, Iginla was named THN's mid-season MVP.
Fire Starter
By Ken Campbell
The City of Calgary is, by anyone’s definition, booming. Sitting in the middle of the oil patch with crude prices pushing $100 a barrel will have that kind of effect on a place.
It has the fastest-growing economy and population of any major city in Canada, maybe in North America. A typical Calgary family pulls in $82,200 a year, about $15,000 more than the national median average. The average resale price for a home in Calgary in 2007 was $438,000 and downtown office space is almost impossible to find. The city expects a labor shortage of 225,000 people in the next decade and hotels have had to close entire floors because they don’t have enough staff to clean the rooms. Good luck getting a bag of popcorn at the movies, too. There might be 10 cash registers there, but you’ll be lucky if you can find three people working them.
Calgary’s economic development department reports things like, “Calgary’s share of job creation in Alberta significantly outpaced its proportion of the province’s working population,” which is a fancy way of saying they can’t find enough people to fill all the jobs. In fact, it’s estimated 100 people per day – per day! – pack up their U-Hauls and move to Calgary from other parts of the country.
It wasn’t always that way and Jarome Arthur-Leigh Adekunle Tij Junior Elvis Iginla (full name) was in Calgary long before they started charging $45 a square foot for office space and before you could record the attendance at a Flames game at 19,289 without checking the summaries. At one point, he went seven full years between playoff games and the fact the Flames were perennial playoff outsiders robbed him of a Hart Trophy in 2001-02, a bauble that went to Jose Theodore.(Iginla and Theodore finished tied in Hart Trophy voting that year, but Theodore won because he was the No. 1 choice on 26 ballots, compared to 23 for Iginla. Legend has it a Montreal writer didn’t put Iginla in his top five and that was the tipping point.)
Not such a great decision in retrospect, but one that could very well be rectified after this season when Iginla picks up his first most valuable player award. To be sure, he is THN’s pick as MVP at the halfway point of the season. Whether you judge the Hart Trophy winner to be the best player in the league or the one most valuable to his team, Iginla is right there in both criteria.
Consider that after 42 Flames games, Iginla had 31 goals and 57 points, putting him on pace for career highs of 60 and 111. Sixteen of his goals and 35 of his points have either pulled the Flames into a tie or put them ahead in games, giving him the league lead in both categories. As of early January, Iginla had been in on 46.7 percent of Calgary’s 122 goals (not including shootout), which put him fourth in the NHL behind Vincent Lecavalier (51.7 percent), Ilya Kovalchuk (50.9 percent) and Sidney Crosby (49.5 percent). Only Kovalchuk (29.5 percent) and Alex Ovechkin (26.8 per cent) have scored a higher percentage of their teams’ goals than Iginla (25.4 per cent).
But Iginla’s most pivotal move came in early December when he suggested to Flames coach Mike Keenan that he be placed on a line with the slumping Daymond Langkow and Kristian Huselius. Keenan thought it was a great idea and the three made up the hottest line in the league in December. Iginla helped propel Huselius into one of the NHL’s most dangerous players. Huselius had two five-point games and finished the month with nine goals and 20 points in 14 games. Meanwhile, no player scored more goals (14) in December than Iggy.
“Yeah, I guess that was a good idea,” Iginla said. “Mike and I talk a lot. He probably ignores 99 percent of what I say, but it’s nice to know you at least have a voice."
Things really are crazy in Calgary. For the first time in forever, Iginla is not off to his usual sluggish start and Keenan has an open-door policy with his players. At least it’s that way with Iginla, probably because Keenan doesn’t want to be looking for his ninth coaching job anytime soon. It’s always wise to listen to your team’s undisputed leader, particularly one who is entering the best years of his career and is on the cusp of superstardom. (The 30-year-old is also coming into his best earning years as a player. Iginla has already earned $41 million in his career and has another $35 million coming to him, thanks to a five-year contract extension he signed last summer.)
“I do feel as confident as I ever have in my career,” Iginla said. “I certainly feel like I’m in my prime. But I think the biggest difference is this is probably the best group of players I’ve ever played with in my career. There are a few guys like me, guys who are in their best years.”
Like Lecavalier, whom Iginla fought in the 2004 Stanley Cup final and whom he will likely battle for the Hart this season, there is not a style of game in which Iginla does not excel. You want finesse? Iginla has the soft hands of a natural scorer, deceptive speed and a lethal shot. Want to slow it down and plug the neutral zone? Iginla led the league in scoring at the height of the dead-puck era. You want it physical? Iginla can play in the trenches with the best of them and has the ability to overpower defenders; he’s probably the toughest star player in the league.
“I played with him the last time he led the league in scoring (in 2001-02), but this is as well as I’ve ever seen him play,” said his close friend and occasional center Craig Conroy. “Yeah, it’s weird. You know, you think, ‘That year he was unbelievable and how much better could he get?’ The new rules have really helped him, but if it gets into a grinding game with lots of battles, I almost prefer when he gets pissed off about things. Then you see the fire in his eyes and that’s when it’s fun to be on the bench with him. You sit there and say, ‘Now they’ve made him mad,’ and that’s a great thing."
Despite the friendly demeanor and winning smile, Iginla acknowledges he has had to work hard over the years to control the beast within. His most impressive gains have been made in what he calls “sticking with it” during games in which things are not going well. Early in his career, he admits he would have allowed frustration to get the better of him during games and a bad first period usually led to a worse second and third.
But that has changed and clear evidence of it came in a 5-3 win over Anaheim Dec. 29. Less than two minutes into the second period, the Flames were down 3-1 and Iginla had played probably his worst period of the season. Keenan benched him for about 10 minutes and Iginla responded by scoring two goals and adding an assist to lead the Flames to a 5-3 victory.
Iginla claims Keenan “politely allowed me to sit out a couple of shifts,” while Keenan said, “Sometimes you have to give a player a chance to reflect upon the situation at the time. I remember in 1987 (in the Canada Cup final), the Soviets got a 3-0 jump on us and I sat Wayne (Gretzky) down for a little while and it was our checking line that got the job done.”
Regardless, it was potentially explosive. Instead of providing fodder for another controversy between Keenan and a star player, Iginla quelled that notion by responding with one of his best efforts of the season.
Keenan acknowledges Iginla is certainly worthy of MVP consideration, but said, “I don’t know if he has surprised me or exceeded my expectations,” which is probably more of a statement on Keenan’s expectations than it is Iginla’s contribution this season.
And it’s that sense of leadership, combined with a skill set that allows him to back it up, that has made Iginla one of the top players in the NHL the past five or six seasons. He is the league’s top goal-scorer in the new millennium, with 286 tallies in 551 games since Jan. 1, 2000, which is almost 30 ahead of the next player. He’s on pace for 348 shots this season, which would be by far a career high and 84 more than he had last season.
And while much has been made of Scott Niedermayer being the most decorated player in hockey history, Iginla is not far behind. Niedermayer is the only player to win a Stanley Cup, Olympic gold medal, world junior and senior championships, a Canada/World Cup and a Memorial Cup. Iginla, meanwhile, led the WHL’s Kamloops Blazers to two Memorial Cups, was named top forward in leading Canada to the 1996 WJC, won a world championship a year later, was Canada’s best player with the 2002 Olympic gold medal team and a big part of Canada’s World cup win in 2004.
That leaves him only one Which is kind of like saying all you need to be a millionaire is a million dollars, given that the void is the Stanley Cup, the most difficult to win. In 2004, Iginla came one excruciating game away from equaling Niedermayer, but there is the sense that despite their underachieving ways since going to the Cup final, the Flames have the foundation on which to build a championship-caliber team.
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed that,” said Iginla of his place in history. “We came so close a few years ago and that just makes me want to win it more.”
There was a time, however, when Iginla wondered whether he would ever become the scorer he envisioned he could be. But then in 1999-2000, he went on a 16-game point-scoring streak that served notice to the rest of the league that he had arrived as a starry player. During that time, he was watching television one night and noticed something very interesting on the ticker on a sportscast.
“They were showing something on players with the most points in the second half and it was (Jaromir) Jagr, (Mike) Modano and then myself,” Iginla said. “That was a huge boost for my confidence. I knew then I could be a scorer in the NHL, even if it was only for one day. I have a lot of respect for all aspects of the game, but I’ve always really wanted to be a goal-scorer.
”It’s probably fitting that things have rarely come easily to Iginla, whose was raised by his mother in Edmonton after his parents split when he was just one year old. A devastating blow, however, came when a 16-year-old Iginla was passed over in the WHL’s bantam draft. The Blazers did get him later in a “rollover” draft that was held because there were so many bantam prospects. In his first year with the Blazers, Iginla scored six goals and knew each game he would get just two shifts in the first period, two in the second and one in the third, unless there was a blowout. He went on to become one of the greatest players in the history of one of the greatest junior franchises of all-time and now is a minority owner in the team along with fellow Blazers alumni Shane Doan, Mark Recchi and Darryl Sydor.
When Iginla was drafted by the Dallas Stars 11th overall in 1995, Stars director of player personnel Craig Button was admonished by a Central Scouting representative who had Iginla rated 26th. Aki Berg went third, Chad Kilger fourth, Steve Kelly sixth, Terry Ryan eighth and Radek Dvorak 10th. Yikes.
“Did we ever think Jarome would be a 50-goal scorer? No,” Button said. “But we definitely thought Jarome would be a top forward on your team and a real rugged type of winger. Did we project him to get to this level? No. I’d be lying if I said so. But we projected him to be a very, very good player.
”When Iginla was dealt to the Flames less than six months later for Joe Nieuwendyk, the Flames were ridiculed both locally and around the league for getting fleeced in the deal. But that deal was much like a deal the Flames made in 1988 when they traded Brett Hull to the St. Louis Blues for Rob Ramage and Rick Walmsley in an attempt to put them over the top. In both cases, the deals worked out great for both sides and Iginla long ago usurped Nieuwendyk as an icon in Calgary.
Conroy said Iginla has definitely matured. He will often take rookies such as Dustin Boyd or Eric Nystrom aside to give them pep talks. But like his idol Mark Messier learned to do, Iginla has developed an ability to motivate without being negative. Conroy said there are few things worse than a hot-headed superstar who yells at people, because it makes players feel worse and consequently, play worse.
And there is little doubt Iginla has taken more of an ownership over the group. There was a time when, like all young players, Iginla was occupied with his little corner of the world, but now he has a team to consider and suggesting he move to a line with Huselius and Langkow was a prime example of that. Keenan broke the line up in late December and as of early January, Iginla was playing with Conroy at center and Huselius on the left side.
“Let’s face it, it doesn’t matter who Jarome plays with, he can play with anybody,” Conroy said. “He just makes you feel so comfortable. Jarome is going. He was going from Day 1 and he hasn’t slowed down. That’s what has made him the kind of leader I’m talking about. He’s not just thinking, ‘Hey, I’m on fire and I’m OK.’ He’s worried about everybody and he wants to get everybody going and involved.”
Any way you look at it, it sounds like MVP material to us.