After Jarome Iginla's breakout performance in the 2001-02 regular season, the debate was on: Can the Hart Trophy winner be on a non-playoff team? THN Managing Editor Jason Kay was in the corner with the Calgary Flames star
Jarome wasn’t built in a day and neither was The Hockey News’s case to recommend him for this year’s Hart Trophy.
After nearly seven months of puck observation, opinion solicitation and number gyration, we determined Jarome Iginla was not only the NHL’s most outstanding player this season, he was also the most valuable to his not-so-valuable team.
To arrive at our destination, we had to cross the bridge of logic that spans Playoff River. How much could a player mean to a team that doesn’t qualify for the post-season? Consider these facts and judge for yourself. (Then go to pg. 23 for some number crunching).
□ Iginla finished with 52 goals, 11 more than the second-place finishers (three tied with 41).
□ The Flames were 23-12-5 when Iginla scored, 9-26-7 when he didn’t. Of other Hart-worthy skaters, only Markus Naslund was in the same ballpark (24-7-1 vs. 18-26-2).
□ Nine Iginla goals tied or won games, second only to Mats Sundin (11) among MVP candidates.
□ Iginla scored a staggering 25.9 per cent of Calgary’s goals and had a hand in 47.8 per cent of them. Both numbers blow away the competition. They also stand up well to Wayne Gretzky’s best years. No. 99 scored 22.1 per cent of Edmonton’s goals in his 92-goal year (1981-82). He was in on had 50.4 per cent of goals in his unparalleled 215-point season (’85-86).
The offense rests, so what about the defense?
Jose Theodore, Patrick Roy and Sean Burke merit strong consideration. Two of them lose points due to the company they keep. Roy plays behind a defense of Rob Blake, Adam Foote, Darius Kasparaitis and Martin Skoula. And his backup, David Aebischer, posted better numbers. Burke got support from Teppo Numminen, Ossi Vaananen, Todd Simpson and Danny Markov and his No. 2 men had respectable stats.
That leaves Habs savior Theodore, whose top D-men were Patrice Brisebois, Craig Rivet and Karl Dykhuis. The Big Three they ain’t and there was a disparity between Theodore and his backups.
So, it comes down to the NHL’s dominant forward who played on a 22nd-place team and the league’s brightest stopper, whose team finished 18th overall. Only four wins separated the two clubs, which, really, wipes out the playoff factor.
Comparing goalies and skaters is thorny because there are few common denominators. For what it’s worth, they both received 14 first-star nods this season.
But in the final analysis, the gap between Iginla and his fellow skaters was significantly greater than the one between Theodore and his goalie brethren. Simply put, nobody did more than Iginla to help his team win. Abridged non-playoff season or not, we’re crossing over to Iginla’s side.
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