Utah Mammoth prospect Tij Iginla will get a shot to win a Memorial Cup in front of his hometown fans, just like his famous father did in 1995. Soon after that, he’ll get another chance to follow in Jarome’s footsteps by becoming an elite NHL goal-scorer.
If you want to learn about how a hockey player’s life is forever changed by winning the Memorial Cup in his hometown, you could do worse than to seek out Josh Gorges.
The blueliner, undrafted in the NHL, parlayed a 2004 Memorial Cup win as captain of the Kelowna Rockets into a free-agent contract and a 783-game NHL career.
Gorges’ major-junior achievements in his hometown still hold a special place in his heart. This season, he’s in his first year as an assistant to coach Derrick Martin with the Rockets as Kelowna prepares to host the 106th edition of Canada’s major-junior championship in May.
According to Rockets left winger Tij Iginla, Gorges regularly lets his charges know what wonders await if they earn the right to hoist the legendary hardware at Prospera Place May 31.
“It’s one of his top memories from his playing career,” Iginla said. “He tells us if you win in Kelowna, the city will remember you forever. It sounds like he had a ton of fun, and he definitely gets the boys excited.”
This year, Iginla will be the torch-bearing hometown hero. Between 2004 and 2008, Hall of Famer Jarome Iginla and his wife, Kara, had all three of their children in the Okanagan after setting up their off-season residence in Lake Country, 30 minutes north of downtown Kelowna.
After Jarome hung up his skates in 2017, the Iginla clan briefly settled in Boston before returning to B.C. full time in 2021. Tij, his older sister, Jade, and his younger brother, Joe, all joined Kelowna’s Rink Hockey Academy, and Jarome signed on as the coach of Joe’s U-15 program.
Tij Iginla has scored 41 goals and 90 points in 48 games. (Matt Krohn-Imagn Images)In major junior, many hometown players still elect to stay with a billet. But Tij remains at the family compound, the only kid at home during hockey season.
“You move in year-round, and it just becomes your home and what you know,” he said. “It’s been great living there. It’s super pretty. Great weather. I’m lucky to be from Kelowna and to live at home as well.”
It’s nearly impossible to overstate Jarome’s status in Canadian hockey, especially on the junior and international stages. The Flames believed they were getting something special when they traded accomplished veteran Joe Nieuwendyk to Dallas to acquire the 18-year-old No. 11 draft pick in a 1995 trade, and they were right.
It’ll be no easy feat for Tij to surpass his father’s NHL exploits (1,300 points over 1,554 games), but if draft position is a barometer for what lies ahead, Tij could do so. In 2024, he was selected sixth overall by Utah, five spots higher than his dad.
As the first-ever draft pick by an organization that was less than three months old, Iginla could have been nervous about what lay ahead in an unproven hockey market on a team that was born from an Arizona Coyotes club that hadn’t made the playoffs in four seasons. But Utah has quickly established a reputation for doing things the right way.
I’m lucky to be from Kelowna and to live at home as well– Tij Iginla
The hockey-centric renovation of their home rink, Delta Center, remains a work in progress. But the Mammoth took their practice facility from conception to reality in a mere 13 months, opening the doors in time for Iginla’s second training camp last September.
“It was pretty cool to see for the first time,” he said. “It was a nicer facility than I’ve ever seen, and probably as nice as anything I’ve seen, even online, across any sport. It shows how much ownership is willing to invest in the organization and the future and how much they care and want to make Utah a destination-type spot for free agency and everything like that.”
The Mammoth also take a detailed approach to prospect development. “They check in quite a bit,” Iginla said.
“My player-development guy, his name’s Jeff Shantz. He comes in almost once a month. And they’ve got the skating guys and the strength guys checking in. So it’s very involved, and you can tell how committed they are to the development of their prospects.”
Tij Iginla (19) and Jarome Iginla (48) (Stephen R. Sylvanie-Imagn Images)Luckily for the Mammoth, there are no glaring weaknesses for Iginla to work on. Though he’s listed at just six-foot, he’s already solidly built at 195 pounds. And like his dad, he’s not afraid to get physical. He’s relentless on the forecheck, goes to the dirty areas, has an elite shot and positions himself smartly in the offensive zone. Utah’s brass sees him as an eventual elite NHL scorer, one who possesses 50-goal potential.
After winning gold with Team Canada at the 2024 U-18 worlds in Finland, Iginla put up 32 points in 21 games with the Rockets that fall before he was shut down in December for arthroscopic surgery on both hips.
By the summer of 2025, he was well enough to join the pro group at Kelowna High Performance for the first time, challenging himself daily against a who’s who of NHL talents who live in the area during the off-season, including one-time Rockets legends Tyler Myers and Luke Schenn, along with Luke’s brother, Brayden.
“There’s some good players,” Iginla said. “Shea Theodore, he trains there. Cole Sillinger. Lots of NHL guys. It’s fun, and the group’s high-level for the skates and stuff. So, it’s been really good.”
Each game means so much, so it’s pretty electric in that sense–Tij Iginla on playing in the Memorial Cup
After the Seattle Thunderbirds lost the 2022 WHL final, GM Bil La Forge stacked his roster with veteran talent for the T-Birds’ 2023 run, which resulted in an Ed Chynoweth Cup win and a berth in the Memorial Cup final in Kamloops.
As a 16-year-old first-year WHL player with the Thunderbirds, Iginla didn’t dress for any Memorial Cup games. But he was along for the ride in the city where his dad won twice in his three seasons with the Kamloops Blazers, including as tournament host in 1995.
“Each game means so much, so it’s pretty electric in that sense,” Iginla said. “It was pretty cool to see the atmosphere and what it was like. Hopefully, Kelowna will be buzzing just as much or more this spring.”
Now part of the Rockets’ leadership group at 19 and fully healthy after his hip surgeries, Iginla will be front and center when Kelowna’s turn as Memorial Cup host begins May 22. As the team’s most potent producer, with 61 points through 34 games, he has welcomed the roster boosts GM Bruce Hamilton has made after the Rockets missed the playoffs last spring.
Tij Iginla scored four goals and eight points in seven games at the 2026 world juniors. (Christopher Hanewinckel-Imagn Images)Among them, Hamilton swung a major deal with Lethbridge in November that brought in center Shane Smith and the rights to 18-year-old Czech left winger Vojtech Cihar. Cihar won a silver medal and was named MVP at the world juniors before making his WHL debut Jan. 7 with two assists in a win over the Tri-City Americans.
Iginla saw his new teammate’s skill set firsthand in two hard-fought games against the Czechs in the Twin Cities.
“He played well against us,” Iginla said. “He looks like a really good player, and we’re super thrilled to have him here in Kelowna.”
It was Cihar’s Czechs who foiled Iginla’s quest for gold thanks to a 6-4 win in the WJC semifinal. But Iginla is proud Team Canada regrouped quickly to finish on a winning note against Finland to take home bronze.
“It almost feels meaningless at first, because you’re so emotional,” Iginla said. “But when you look at it, it’s still a medal for your country. As much as that semifinal loss sucked, it was still really important to win that next game.”
Now, the goal for Iginla is to win the final game of his junior season and become a Memorial Cup champion in front of his fans in Kelowna.
This article appeared in The Hockey News' Future Watch 2026 issue.
Future Watch 2026 looks at the world's best prospects from every angle. We analyze the top 10 in the pipeline for each NHL club and count down the top 100 in the game.
In addition, we take an in-depth look at how the Seattle Kraken are refining their development system, and we profile several of hockey's best youngsters, including Anton Frondell, Tij Iginla, and Sebastian Cossa.