Good night: I like Jarome Iginla
December 17th, 2008
The Lead
You may or may not have gotten the memo on this, but Jarome Iginla is a pretty decent hockey player.
Tonight he almost singlehandedly willed the Flames to a 6-3 win over the St. Louis Blues on the strength of a two-goal, two-assist performance. One goal was lucky, one goal was scary, one assist was beautiful and the other was heads-up. If there’s a more complete player in hockey, I’d like to know about him.
Iginla opened the scoring with what can only be described as a goalscorer’s goal, as a bouncing shot from Cory Sarich deflected off the inside of a falling Iginla’s glove and in just 4:14 into the game. His second goal, which came at 17:38 of the first, was one of those vintage Iginla plays where he finds himself in acres of space for some inexplicable reason and loads up a trillion-mile-an-hour snapshot off one foot. How does any team allow Iginla to find himself with a puck on his stick and no defenseman within 10 feet of him? Note to NHL defenses: Giving Iginla this kind of space is not conducive to winning hockey games.
It should be noted, before continuing, that were it not for the play of Chris Mason during that first period, things could have been a LOT worse for St. Louis than 2-0. He made 13 first-period saves and a great many of them were of very high quality. He certainly prevented Iginla from having a hat trick in the opening 20, that’s for sure. And for a while, Miikka Kiprusoff, who had far less work to do than did Mason in making eight saves in the first, made it seem like this game would end up being a goaltending battle. But once Iginla got that second goal, the Flames were off to the races.
Matt Lombardi scored his third of the year early in the second before the Flames defense decided to take 10 minutes off and let the Blues cut it to 3-2 — and Adrian Aucoin’s giveaway on the Patrick Berglund goal was so good he should’ve gotten an assist — before Iginla hefted the Flames onto his back again, setting up consecutive goals from Mike Cammalleri (and what a beauty this feed was) and Aucoin, via an ahead pass to Lombardi that sprang them for the 2-on-1.
From there, the game was academic and Iginla had career points Nos. 796, 797, 798 and 799. To give you an idea of just how important Iginla is to the Flames, he has scored at least one goal in 12 games this year and the Flames are 11-1-0 in them. That’s a .917 winning percentage! When he doesn’t score, they’re 6-10-3 for a winning percentage of .395. That’s an awful big swing, obviously, and it points to both the Flames’ frustrating inconsistency and Iginla’s inherent value to the team. He may be on pace for “only” 44 goals and 98 points now, but if he shows up, the Flames are nearly unstoppable.
As a Flames fan, I wish he’d shown up to more than just 12 of 31 games this year.

In the first semi-major trade of the season that will actually have a significant impact on both teams, the Maple Leafs acquired the white-hot Lee Stempniak from the St. Louis Blues for Alex Steen and Carlo Colaiacovo.
“Out indefinitely.”

