In November, fans and media alike were bemoaning the state of the Calgary Flames (myself included). "Lack of leadership" was frequently sited as a potential root cause of the Flames struggles.
Amazing what a record tying 6 game winning streak will do.
Iginla’s leadership and intensity on the ice may have, by itself, grabbed this troubled team from the brink of a disastrous season and brought them back into the race for the conference lead. An eight-day period from Dec. 9-16 may be remembered as the stretch the Flames roared back on track, and it was their captain who led the way.
That's former Oiler coach Craig Simpson writing for the CBC. His praise is even more effusive later in the article:
Jarome Iginla is a great leader, and his play this season has reminded us all just how much he has grown into that role...
Calgary has never had a Hart Trophy winner in their 28-year history, but Jarome Iginla should be their first.
After watching Jarome beat up another one his players and take over another game, Ken Hitchcock had this to say about Iggy in the Columbus dispatch:
"You have two or three (players), those are the ones who always drag people into the fight," Hitchcock said. "You always have 20 to 30 percent of your team when it's game time, they're kind of wondering what's going to happen. And teams that have success are the ones who have the players who push them into hard areas -- push, pull, drag, whatever you want, they get them into those areas...
The thing Iginla figured out pretty early in his NHL career is that his personality, his play and his determination had an impact on everybody. I mean, his fight turned the game around in Calgary. When he gets after people and he gets nasty and determined, I think it influences everybody on the bench...
Rick has shown that. Where Rick is still on the learning curve is when somebody goes after him like a (Chris) Pronger, he's got to learn to play through a guy like him or a guy like (Zdeno) Chara, which is very difficult to do, and that's what Iggy's figured out. Iggy plows right through those guys."
Hell, Jarome is even getting kudos in articles directed at other players. In his recent piece about Kristian Huselius, Larry Wigge notes:
It didn’t take Huselius long to figure out that if he watched the ultra-competitive Iginla, he might pick up something that would help his game.
"I would watch Jarome prepare for a game, get himself focused. Every day he was like that," Huselius said. "And I would watch how hard he worked on the ice. I knew I had to be more consistent like that."
I hated hearing the "lack of leadership" trope from aggravated fans before this incredible 6 game run for it's lack of clarity and testability as a theory. Now I hope to never hear it again while Jarome wears Flames silks - because it's so very obviously not true.
