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Jarome Iginla, the dynamic Flames' winger, still has painful visions of the Lightning celebrating their Game 7 Stanley Cup victory.
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Cup quest fuels Iginla's passion
By Larry Wigge | NHL.com columnist
Oct. 19, 2005
Down through the years, some incredible athletes have watched, listened and learned how to win it all.
I'll never forget Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier describing how a young group of Edmonton Oilers watched the New York Islanders hold them to just six goals in four games in 1983 to become only the second team to ever win four consecutive Stanley Cups. Gretzky and Messier recalled every minute of the Islanders' celebration that year, and then made a few changes and came back to win it all themselves for the first of five times in seven years by beating those same Islanders in the Finals one year later.
That reminded me of a similar story that Jarome Iginla, the Calgary Flames' incredible power forward, told me in Chicago recently. The same kind of celebration memories have lingered long since that steamy night filled with electricity in Tampa back in June of 2004, when the Lightning beat the Flames in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals and then partied all night.
Just seeing former Lightning goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin in Chicago that mid-September night brought back the memories of that steamy Tampa night. When reporters asked Iginla about his feelings on the anniversary, memories sort of swelled up in him just thinking about what could have been.
Larry Wigge has covered the NHL since 1969. The longtime NHL columnist for The Sporting News, Wigge is now an NHL.com columnist and a frequent contributor to the website.
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Every good story has drama, conflict and expectations. Iginla felt all of those things as he prepared for that game in Chicago. The odd twist to this part of Iginla's story is that the game was a meaningless preseason game.
But knowing what a compassionate competitor Iginla is, it isn't strange that those feelings of drama, conflict and expectations started churning inside him, when he crossed paths with Khabibulin at the United Center 15-plus months later. After all, it was Khabibulin, then the No. 1 goalie for the Lightning, who was the main obstacle that stood in Iginla's way from helping his Flames become the first Canadian team to win the Stanley Cup since 1993.
"It's funny, but seeing Nik made me remember that night ... Game 7 ... all over again," Iginla said. "He's with Chicago now and he wasn't even dressed for our game against the Blackhawks. But the memories of sitting in the visitor's locker room in Tampa next to my teammates after we lost and being able to hear the Lightning players out on the ice celebrating flashed inside me again.
"When you get that close and then you hear the other team, the other fans celebrating to 'Simply The Best' and 'We Are The Champions', that hurt. It hurt a lot. We didn't know who was holding the Cup, but each time someone else took it, you could hear the fans go nuts. We're just sitting there, soaking all of this in and imagining what it would feel like ... if it was us."
It's easy to put Iginla in the competitive company of a Gretzky or Messier as an incredible player who just might, with his determined demeanor, become a champion.
It is that same kind of determination and respect for the great game that he plays that has made him potentially the same kind of ambassador for hockey that Gretzky was.
Iginla is the kind of person any fan can root for, no matter what your favorite team is. He's caring, reflective and, most important, passionate about the game of hockey. And he's hungry to hold the mantle of leader, champion.
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Iginla is driven even more after he and the Flames fell just short of winning the Cup in 2004.
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"One side of me thinks about how close we were to winning it all, but the other side thinks about playing again and getting another chance to get back," he said. "I thought I wanted to win a Stanley Cup before -- and I did -- but it's at a whole new level, a whole new passion to get back there ... and win."
Iginla is right. A lot has happened since Monday, June 7, 2004, in Tampa. Hockey lost a season. Teams have, in some cases, been remade. Because of the time off and new rules, the NHL itself is different. There's a mystery to just how the teams and players will adapt to the new landscape.
But one thing is perfectly clear: Jarome Iginla became the face of the NHL during the Flames' Cinderella run to the 2004 Stanley Cup Finals. Not since Gretzky retired his mantle of ambassador of the game has hockey seen a player who can represent everyman.
"He's big and strong, skilled and yet passionate about the game," Los Angeles Kings center Craig Conroy, formerly Iginla's linemate in Calgary, said. "You want more and more people to know him, because when they get to know him, they're going to love him."
Conroy paused for a moment to think about what he had just said. Then, he added a little proviso, the kind that came with a rather unusual look into who Jarome Iginla is.
"Whoever Jarome is as a person, he isn't that guy on the ice," Conroy said, with a mischievous smile. "That's a totally different personality. On the ice, he's mean, he's ruthless, he talks a lot of trash and he'll do anything to win. Whatever it takes to get it done, that's what he'll do.
"Off the ice? He's just one of the guys you enjoy being around. He's a good friend. He would do anything for you. He would do anything for this game."
Detroit Red Wings power forward Brendan Shanahan remembers seeing how Iginla stood up for himself and his teammates in a seven-game, first-round series playoff triumph over Vancouver in which he battled toe-to-toe with Canucks defenseman Mattias Ohlund. Iginla did the same in the next round against Detroit defensemen Derian Hatcher and Chris Chelios, making an indelible impact on Shanahan and his teammates.
Shanahan on Iginla
"If they're going to hand the torch over to somebody, he's that guy. He's a throwback player. He doesn't dive; he sticks up for himself; he sticks up for his teammates; he plays hard in both ends of the rink."
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"I see a lot of young players today who are supposed to be the future of the game and I shake my head. Guys who dive. Guy who don't put the team first," Shanahan told me during the series against Calgary. "If they're going to hand the torch over to somebody, he's that guy. He's a throwback player. He doesn't dive; he sticks up for himself; he sticks up for his teammates; he plays hard in both ends of the rink.
"He's a classy player."
"He can beat you with his shot. He can beat you with his speed and size. He can beat you with his presence on the ice," Khabibulin said.
With Iginla's speed, it's tough to out-skate him. With his strength, it's tough to overpower him. With his heart, there aren't very many players who are going to outwork him. And don't forget the self-motivation and self-awareness that enable Jarome to outsmart most opponents.
"He's big and plays so strong and fast on most nights he is nearly impossible to stop. Some nights you almost had to tackle him to slow him down," said St. Louis Blues defenseman Eric Brewer, who spent the four seasons in Edmonton playing the Flames and Iginla six times each season.
With the new rules, where a defenseman can't put his hands or stick on a player until he gets the puck, Brewer said anything short of tackling Iginla on some nights won't be enough to slow him down.
By now, Iginla is no secret superstar. The last two seasons he could have been/maybe should have been the NHL's Most Valuable Player. He finished second to Montreal goaltender Jose Theodore in 2002-03 and runner-up to Tampa Bay winger Martin St. Louis in 2003-04.
The 28-year-old Iginla led the NHL in goals with 52 in 2002-03 and shared the league lead with Columbus' Rick Nash and Atlanta's Ilya Kovalchuk with 41 goals in 2003-04.
Everyman's hero? You could say he's the closest thing to Tiger Woods in the NHL. Big. Strong. Handsome. Quotable. Divergent. Powerful. Magnetic and charismatic personality.
And don't forget courageous teammate after having game-winning points in half of Calgary's 12 playoff wins heading into the finals, including points in the series-clinching goals in each of the first three rounds of the playoffs.
It's almost like Iginla has put the rest of the Flames on his back and dared the rest of the NHL to stop them.
"The biggest reason he took a step forward this year is because he's assumed the leadership of the team," Flames GM-Coach Darryl Sutter said before the series against Tampa Bay. "Before he was the face of the team, and it was the wrong sort of pressure to have on him, even in the locker room. 'Well, if Jarome doesn't score, we can't win.' Or, it's all right if the Flames lost and Jarome had a big game.
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Iginla has thrived while being the face of the Calgary organization for several years.
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"It doesn't work that way and I think we all saw that when Jarome scored 52 goals and we missed the playoffs. It's not an easy thing for such a talented individual to sacrifice some of his personal goals for the team. But I think Jarome has taken that to heart and tried to make everyone else around him understand the team concept."
It wasn't a hard transition for Iginla, who grew up near Edmonton idolizing the Oilers when he won five Stanley Cups in seven years from 1984 through 1990 and Gretzky and Mark Messier and other superstars shared their success with teammates. Iginla particularly remembered the contributions of Hall of Fame goaltender Grant Fuhr.
"Being the only black player on my team growing up, I dreamt just like everybody else to be in the NHL," Iginla said. "When I would say it, some other kids -- not trying to be mean -- (said) 'There are not that many black players in the NHL. What are the chances?'"
Iginla has the kind of self-motivation, hunger, burning inside him to defy the odds.
"I take pride in trying to lead the way for the next generation of minority hockey players, minority athletes," he told me. "I know what it meant to me to follow the exploits of Grant Fuhr, Tony McKegney, Claude Vilgrain. It's hard to put into words, but it made me feel it was possible."
Iginla said the biggest change in his career came in September, 2001, when he was invited to scrimmage at the Canadian Olympic camp.
"The first step is to believe that it's possible," Iginla said. "Once I had a taste of success, you start to believe in it a little more."
And making that team and watching greats like Mario Lemieux and Joe Sakic up close and personal injected Iginla with a newfound confidence.
Now, Jarome Iginla has won Olympic gold, a world championship, a world junior crown and two Memorial Cups. The only thing missing is a Stanley Cup. ...
And being on the ice when they play "We Are The Champions" and "Simply The Best".
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