Iginla Perfect for Boston

There is one Bruin who is one of the best players from his country, but not making the trip to Sochi for the Winter Olympics. Jarome Arthur-Leigh Adekunle Tig Junior Elvis Iginla didn’t get much consideration for Team Canada this time around, but he’s already earned two Gold Medals, one in Salt Lake City in 2002 and the other in Vancouver in 2010, and there’s only one prize in his career he still needs to achieve: his name inscribed on Lord Stanley’s Cup. I am certain that Iggy will get inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto when his playing career, he is a player so good that retiring without winning the Stanley Cup will seem like an unsatisfying career.

Jarome Iginla is the greatest player in the history of the Calgary Flames. In 2002, the same season he helped Canada win it’s first Olympic Gold Medal in 50 years, he won the Art Ross Trophy as the NHL’s top scorer, becoming the first player in 20 years not named Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, or Jaromir Jagr to win the award. In 2004, he captained the Flames to the Stanley Cup Finals, losing to the Tampa Bay Lightning in seven games. It seemed at the time like Iginla had a great chance of getting back there again in the near future, but the 2004-05 NHL lockout cost him an entire season in the prime of his career with the best roster around him in Calgary. The Flames slowly declined in the years following the lockout, and found themselves at the bottom of the NHL food chain by the time the 2012 lockout rolled around (The NHL averages one lockout per U.S. presidency over the last two decades. It’s really bad.). When the condensed 2013 season began, hockey fans all around North America knew that Iggy would be the most prized treasure at the trade deadline if Calgary were to get off to a slow start.

When trade talks heated up, Iginla, who had a no-trade clause in his contract, narrowed down his list of teams to which he would accept trades to the four most recent Stanley Cup champions: the Los Angeles Kings, Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks, and Pittsburgh Penguins. He was right to think those would be the teams that gave him the best chance to win the Cup in 2013, seeing as they would eventually be the four remaining teams in the tournament. The Bruins and Penguins pushed the hardest to acquire Iginla. The Bruins offered two defensemen from their AHL affiliate in Providence, while the Penguins offered two college players, one from Yale and another from St. Cloud State (both schools would end up reaching college hockey’s Frozen Four for the first time later that month). The Bruins were under the impression that they had a deal in place, and former Bruins defenseman Aaron Ward even reported news of the trade on TSN and on Twitter. The next morning, Bruins fans woke up expecting that the news of Iggy’s trade to Boston would still be a reality, but that was not the case. The Flames went back to their franchise superstar, believing the two trade offers to be equal in value, and let him make the decision. The Penguins were one a hot streak at the time and seemed like they were far and away the NHL’s best team.

Iginla chose Pittsburgh in the hopes that he could win the Cup with the man he assisted on the Gold Medal clinching overtime goal in Vancouver against the United States, Sidney Crosby. Penguins head coach Dan Bylsma had other ideas and the two never got to spend much time on the same line. The Pens kept winning until they ran into the Boston Bruins in the Eastern Conference Finals. Some teams would have fallen apart after having the rug pulled out from under them like that, but the 2013 Bruins were not most teams. They were playing an inspired brand of hockey that Pittsburgh had no answer for, and had a Finnish wall in front of their net named Tuukka Rask. The Bruins swept the Pens in four games, and reached the Stanley Cup Finals for the second time in three years, ultimately losing to the mighty Chicago Blackhawks in the closest six game series in history. Another year of being so close, yet so far for Jarome Iginla.

In the summer of 2013, Iginla became a free agent, and he turned out to be nothing more than a rental for the Pittsburgh Penguins, whose priority was finding a way to fit superstars Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang under the NHL’s hard salary cap. The Bruins were making moves of their own to retool the roster, and Nathan Horton elected to sign with the Columbus Blue Jackets in free agency, so it made all the sense in the world for Iginla and the B’s to put the trade deadline drama behind them and join forces.

In the short term, Iginla has been as advertised, and the Bruins are better now than they would have been with Nathan Horton. Horton was the type of player to coast through the regular season, but step it up in the playoffs. Iggy gives the same effort every night, and his made linemates Milan Lucic and David Krejci look better this regular season. Iginla goes into the Olympic Break with 17 goals and 26 assists, which puts him 2nd only behind Krejci on the team in points this season. Iggy has had a reputation as one of the best fighting skill players in the NHL, which makes him a perfect fit for what Claude Julien’s Bruins try to do. Jarome Iginla was born to be a Bruin, but it took him until he was 36 years old to get there.

While Patrice Bergeron, Zdeno Chara, David Krejci, Tuukka Rask, and Loui Eriksson are all in Russia trying to earn Olympic Gold for their countries, Jarome Iginla has just one more goal in mind. This month gives him a chance to rest a little bit because there is still a long way to go. He came to Boston for one reason, and he has yet to find it.