Former Kings & Flames Rave About Jarome Iginla’s Hall-of-Fame Induction

(Photo credit: Conroy/Noah Graham-Getty Images;
Iginla/Harry How-Getty Images;
Regehr/Dan Hickling-Olean Times Herald)

They may have been all been members of the Los Angeles Kings at different times but Craig Conroy, Robyn Regehr and Jarome Iginla have all represented the franchise well. As for the latter, though, he will be representing the team he finished his career with this coming November when he officially enters the Hockey Hall of Fame.

He may have only played 19 games for the club but Jarome Iginla’s time with the Kings is nonetheless a special one as it is a connection between himself and two of his teammates, and good friends, from the Calgary Flames in the aforementioned Conroy and Regehr.

Entering 2020 as a first-ballot nominee, it came as little to no surprise that Iginla would be headlining this year’s Hall of Fame class, and a deep one at that, which includes Marian Hossa and four-time Stanley Cup-winning GM Ken Holland. Iginla officially received the call this afternoon, capping off a career that saw Edmonton native score 625 goals and 1300 points in 1554 career games. But, there was a lot more to Iginla’s career that his numbers.

Earlier today, I had the pleasure of speaking with both Craig Conroy and Robyn Regehr about their friend’s induction call.

Getting the Call

While all three were Kings, Conroy, Regehr and Iginla each spent the vast majority of their playing careers with the Flames, enjoying some of the club’s greatest moments together as well as dealing with the club’s more unpleasant times together. Nevertheless, the trio left a lasting impact on the Flames organization and for Conroy and Regehr, they couldn’t be happier for their former teammate.

“First of all, I’m just so proud of him obviously with everything he’s accomplished over his career,” Conroy said. “As good as a player as he was on the ice, he’s a great person off the ice. For me, it was a slam dunk for him to get in, first-time ballot. It wasn’t even close. You know, everything he’s getting right now, he deserves.”

“I’m very happy for Jarome and his family,” said Regehr. “He’s a guy I played with for a long time, 11 years, and he was probably the most competitive person I’ve seen in my life on and off the ice.”

Regehr, fresh off enjoying the day on the boat with his family in northern Saskatchewan, was more than happy to share some examples of his former teammate’s competitive fire.

“We would show up at training camp and have a few rounds of golf and he had to win,” Regehr elaborated. “We would go to fitness testing at camp and he would always have to win and best in the best shape. That was just the way he was. That was his personality. He loved to compete, loved to win and you could see that in him as a player. He just loved to compete any way that he could whether it was scoring goals, getting in a fight or whatever the team needed, he tried to do.”

Leading a Transformation from Pretenders into Contenders

When many think of Jarome Iginla, they tend to think of the mid-2000’s when the new Hall-of-Famer transformed the Calgary Flames into a regular playoff- and championship-contender. Iginla, along with Conroy and Regehr, however, who joined the club in 1999 and 2000, respectively, had to deal with lackluster results first.

When he appeared in a pair of playoff games in 1996 as an 18-year-old, Iginla may not have predicted that he would not appear in the postseason again for another eight years. Unfortunately, that was just the case as between ’96 and 2004, the Flames failed to make the playoffs. Even Iginla’s efforts — including a 52-goal, 96-point campaign in 2001-02 — weren’t enough book springtime hockey in Cowtown. Still, there was just something about Iginla that reminded his teammates to just keep going no matter what.

“When I first got [to Calgary] in 2000, the drive and the compete that he had, his main focus was always to make the playoffs,” Conroy reflected. “I mean, that’s what he wanted to bring: for Calgary to be relevant again in the Western Conference. We even started really well, the 2001-02 season or might have been the next one, but we had a great start but missed the playoffs. But, you could really see how Jarome said, ‘Hey, you know what, we were close this year but it’s not good enough, guys, and we have to get back [to the playoffs].'”

As for the Flames’ struggles early in his tenure, Regehr did not pull any punches.

“From ’99 until 2003, we did not have a very good team,” the former blueliner stated matter-of-factly. “It was a struggle. Not just on the ice but also with fan support. We were struggling and there was a direct correlation there. We were playing in front of 9-, 10-, 11,000 fans at home games. So, it was a challenge and being in a Canadian market like Calgary where people do care about the hockey team and how it’s doing, you can never fully get away from that where you take the wins and losses home with you — to the grocery store, to the movie theatre, wherever you go — people want to know why the team is losing.”

Of course, while few would have blamed him for feeling the heat of carrying a losing team, Iginla not only took these unpleasant moments in stride, but he thrived on them, making both himself and his team better on and off the ice.

“But Jarome, he was always professional on and off the ice and that’s difficult to do,” Regehr continued. “It’s easy to talk about but to actually [be happy and professional] when you’re taking heat for a loss, fans aren’t happy with how you played or whatever, it’s hard to do, it’s hard to execute but he did it. He did all the time and that’s something that made him special.”

Rising to Superstardom

When the Flames ended their eight-year playoff drought in 2004, some may have believed that the Flames reached their peak that season. As for Iginla, who lead his team with 41 goals and 73 points, there was more at stake.

Never mind that he wanted to bring the Flames their first playoff series victory in 15 years, Jarome Iginla wanted to shock the hockey world while establishing himself as one of the sport’s greatest leaders.

“When we did get to the playoffs in 2004, I don’t think we really expected to do quite as well,” admitted Conroy. “But it was amazing to watch Jarome transform himself from a star player into a superstar player in the league. It was one of the best playoff performances I’ve ever seen and I was able to ride shotgun, so I was able to see [Jarome’s transformation] quite a bit and made it even that much more fun for me. He was a true warrior and an unbelievable power forward in the game at that time.”

In 26 games that spring, Iginla would score 13 goals and add nine assists, spearheading upsets of the Canucks, Red Wings and Sharks before he and the Flames would fall just short in the Stanley Cup Final to the Tampa Bay Lightning in seven grueling games.

“The opposite was true after [those first few seasons],” added Regehr. “We had a great run [in 2004], eventually fell one goal short but the city came alive and it really got behind and supported the Flames a tremendous amount and you saw that everywhere you went in Calgary and even in Western Canada and all across Canada. It was really great to be a part of that and for Jarome, he was the face of the franchise both through the bad times when we started and the good times.

“Off the ice, he was a great spokesperson and ambassador and on the ice, he was the same. So, we saw both sides of the coin there and he didn’t change much, which says a lot about him and his character.”

Witnessing a Hall-of-Famer in Motion

Now an assistant general manager with the Flames, Craig Conroy is proud to call Calgary home, and Jarome Iginla was a big reason for how deeply he feels about the city and the organization. Yet, for someone who was teammates with him for nine years — spreading over two tenures — Conroy simply has too many memories of Iginla to share in such a short period of time. Still, the Flames’ assistant GM couldn’t help but glow about the times he had with his friend.

“There are so many memories but one of my favourites, we had just started playing together,” Conroy started. “I dumped the puck in and he thought it was a 3-on-2 and I thought it was a 3-on-3; but I dumped the puck in and when I got back to the bench, and he said to me, ‘Hey, you’re not a checker here anymore. We need to start scoring goals, so if you want to dump it in, you go get it.'”

In his second full season in the NHL (1997-98), Conroy would score a very respectable 14 goals and 43 points for the St. Louis Blues, his points totals would drop each of the two-and-a-half seasons before he was traded to Calgary. Conroy’s point production would increase again once he joined Iginla — 75, 59 and 47 points in his first three full seasons with the Flames. But, soon after being paired with Iginla, Conroy was reminded of a former teammate, another Hall-of-Famer.

“So– and I got to play with Brett Hull [with St. Louis] and I got to see him score goals and then Jarome Iginla scoring goals,” Conroy said. “It was just so much fun because they thought they were going to score every time they were on the ice. Every game, they wanted to score and they had a hunger and a desire and the ability that not many players had.

“To see Jarome work and everything you wanted to do, he would say, ‘Just put [the puck] to an area, I’ll battle everybody,’ and that’s when you can hook, hold and grab onto guys, and it was just amazing to sit back and watch him battle through things, make plays and score goals. Sometimes, he’d score goals and he would shoot it, hips, body, the puck, everything went into the net, the goalie went in the net. His mindset was, ‘I will not be denied,’ and that’s what made him such a special player, for sure.”

For Robyn Regehr, who would later go on to win a Stanley Cup with the Kings in 2014, it was Iginla’s aforementioned competitive fire that resonated with the 16-year NHL veteran for the remainder of his playing career.

“I loved that he was a competitor,” Regehr emphasized. “Whatever activity we were doing, he loved to win.”

Some of that competitive fire, in fact, was showcased during a time when Iginla and Conroy found themselves on the losing end of a battle with the defenseman, inspiring the duo to be resilient.

“We had this little computer game on airplanes on road trips and Craig Conroy, [Iginla], [former Flames and Kings defenseman] Denis Gauthier and myself would play. We kept beating them because Denis Gauthier was really, really good and he would have these tricks that he would always do. So, we kept beating Jarome and Craig and they did not like that *laughing*, so they went, did homework and did a bunch of stuff, studying up on it and eventually they were beating us, but that’s the kind of guy that [Iginla] was. He hated losing.”

This had slipped Conroy’s mind — until this afternoon, that is.

“That is exactly right,” the Potsdam, N.Y., native recalls, laughing. “We lost like a hundred games and then started to figure it out. I forgot about that.”

As competitive as he was, though, no one could accuse Iginla of being poorly conditioned.

“He was in phenomenal shape,” Regehr recalls. “If you look at his career and the durability that he showed as a player, he wasn’t always a fast starter for the regular season but if you look at the games played throughout his career, he was very consistent in staying healthy and being productive. A lot had to do with the work he put in off the ice in the off-season and during the season, as well.”

A Hall-of-Fame Human

There was another side to Iginla’s personality, though, which made the former Flames captain one of the most likable figures in the game of hockey.

“All of the things he did off the ice, there are too many to even talk about but he was just a very, very good ambassador for the Flames and for the city of Calgary,” Regehr noted. “I remember family and friends coming to visit me, staying after the game underneath the Saddledome and waiting for me. So, they’re chit-chatting and then Jarome came out later on and he had a bunch of people waiting for him and my friends ask me if I mind if they went over to him and asked for autographs and I said, ‘Yeah, go and ask nicely,’ and Jarome, always smiling and always happy to accommodate, he signed every single autograph. Win or lose, he was extremely professional.”

Drafted 11th overall by the Dallas Stars in 1995, Iginla would never play a game for the team that drafted him. Instead, the Stars shipped him and Corey Millen to the Flames in December 1995 in exchange for veteran Joe Nieuwendyk. In a rare trade that would benefit both sides, the Flames had to be more patient. While the Stars would go on to win the Stanley Cup in 1999 — with Nieuwendyk winning the Conn Smythe — the Flames needed more work before finding their own groove, but when they did, it all came together, underlining the patience of a team and the loyalty of a future Hall-of-Famer.

Over the course of his 20-year career, Iginla would also play for the Penguins, Bruins and Avalanche before finishing with the Kings, but it was his time as a Flame that has made Jarome Iginla’s entrance into hockey’s Holiest shrine a reality, scoring 525 goals and 1095 points in 1219 games for the franchise.\

Iginla even shone on the international stage, winning gold for Canada twice at the Olympics and once each at the World Juniors and the World Championships. Iginla was even instrumental in helping his native country win the World Cup of Hockey in 2014.

Both Craig Conroy and Robyn Regehr, like countless others, are richer for having been Iginla’s teammates but are even more so for having the honour of calling him their friend.

To Jarome Iginla and the rest of the 2020 Hall of Fame class, congratulations.

 

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