Thursday, April 20, 2006

 

Reality Check

It would seem that this thread has settled down, and may not get to 100 comments. At the risk of beating a dead horse:

Jarome Iginla had a good, not great, season, and now is the time when he will, or will not, earn his money. Am I saying that if the Flames go deep in the playoffs, he gets a pass on his non-Hart Trophy-contending regular season? Well YEAH!

He captained a team that has met pretty high expectations thus far (I picked the Flames to be 2nd in the conference, but close enough). He led the team in Goals and Points. He was 2 back of the team lead in Assists; if you exclude assists on Goals Scored By Jarome Iginla, he led that category easily too. He's a very good defensive forward, and he's always better at the end of games; I remain convinced that he's the fittest skater in the NHL. And Cosh notes sincerely in his original piece, he is a mensch; a guy any city in the league would be proud to have on their team.

And if you want to argue that he's overpaid, which I do not, the problem still remains of how you might spend that $7M in a way that makes the Flames better than they are now. You just can't go to Sport Chek and pick three $2.3M scorers off the shelf; they're set in goal, and have a fantastic defense.

Go forth, Jarome, and show everyone what you're made of. We can have this discussion in July.

Comments:

Iginla was one of the top 20 goal scorers and his team won its division. It's hard to argue with that.
 


Don't start kissing on the Mirtle until you see who he picked to win the Calgary-Anaheim series.

Besides, his description also fits Brendan Shanahan and Henrik Zetterberg, who didn't even clear $5 million between the two of them and who both outscored Iginla individually. That would make Iggy's salary about 300% of his market value.
 


What do you guys think the market is for a guy with two Richard Trophies and an Art Ross in the last couple of years? $7-million seems rather reasonable.

The thing is, even if this is an off year for Iginla, it's a hell of a lot better than the off years of a truly overpaid guy like Marty St. Louis or Nikolai Khabibulin. (And you're going to tell me those two weren't rewarded for team success?)

Iginla's one of the best players in the league, and if he played for a less offensively challenged team, he would have had at least 40+ goals. And that in an allegedly off year.

Aren't the Flames a ways under the cap anyway? Yeesh.
 


Hey, you were the one who put forward the "top-20 scorer on a division champ" thing. Me, I agree with the second thing you wrote, give or take maybe a mil and a half.
 


(I also did crack up over JHuck's bit at the top of the thread. But it was Kiprusoff, with that copper-coloured fuzz scattered haphazardly all over an unnervingly prominent Ugrian skull, who was the Ginger-Haired Cunt of original renown.)
 

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