They call him, Iggy!
Another season has started, some great posts have appeared and the Flames as of this post are 5-2-1. I won’t be going into the meltdown in the Windy City but I was at the last game vs. the Canuckleheads and the enigmatic Luongo and the entire night, I was thinking about the play of Iggy. Jarome Iginla, heart and soul of the Flames since Theo left and he’s been everything that the Flames asked him to be. But what’s happening now? The Jokinen experiment is put on hold as they were separated and he was on a line with Connie and Curtis, he has 2G-2A-4Pts. and has seem to lost the spotlight… what’s going on???
My Answser: NOTHING
Iginla for the most part is still Iginla. He still has his speed, he still fights for the puck in the corner, he still has eagle eyes for passing the puck and can still find the net. Is it because he’s a slow starter? Not at all. Something that happened last year was that often times, it was up to Iginla to put up the dukes and it was Iginla being baited into fights he needed not be in… (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmEDbTi7XOs this fight was a doozy when he fells Willie Mitchell) However, this year, there are solid troopers like Brandon Prust and Brian McGratten to take up that mantle (By the way, Congrats to McGratten for the Gordie Howe Hat-Trick, sorry Darcy, gotta show it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj7gb9AKE_w). Every great team has guys to throw down so that the talented top players need not to… From the Cup run in 2004, we’ve seemed to have lost the edge on guys that can fight or at least take that burden away from Iginla. Krysztov Oliwa was the last Flame to amass over 200 PIM and that was back in 2004, since then we’ve had Darren McCarty, Dion Phaneuf, Jim Vandermeer and Eric Goddard all try to relive Iginla of that role but none have really done it well. Don’t get me wrong, I love to see Iggy throw down when the team needs it but lets face it, we’d rather see him score! The 2006 Jim Playfair year had NO Flame with over 100 PIM… go figure, with guys like Husselius and Tanguay… yikes!
Iginla has the target on him every game and that’s great! He works just as hard as he did before but now he is surrounded by guys who take the burden of the little jobs Iginla shouldn’t have been doing so that he can concentrate on his all around play. I still belive that Iginla has just as much talent as the Ovechkins and the Crosby’s but he’s more than that, he fights, checks, and pours his heart out every shift and so I don’t look at numbers and wonder what is going on, I see Iginla for what he’s always been, the heart and soul of the Calgary Flames leading by example and walking the talk.
Always a pleasure!
Naoto
