Print It: Iginla Becomes a Star

Jarome Iginla checks the newspaper. Every morning. This is not because he is vain but rather because he is skeptical. Yet there it is, every morning, his name first on the list of the NHL’s goal scorers.

Iginla is aware that even this distinction does not make him famous, except maybe in Canada. He is aware that his brown skin and baby face lead many who first meet him to wonder if he is a hockey player at all. Even to him, there are times it all sounds ridiculous, that a 24-year-old with a previous season-high mark of 31 goals could have already surpassed that number, besting the likes of Keith Tkachuk, Jeremy Roenick, Eric Lindros.

Yet there is his name in the newspaper, and here he is an All-Star who’s headed to Salt Lake City for the Olympics. “Sometimes, you just kind of shake your head,” said Iginla.

“The Olympic thing was especially amazing, and even now, when I’m interviewed and asked how Canada is going to do, I still feel like a fan,” he said. “I say, ‘Well, I think they have a great shot,’ and then I’m like, ‘Whoa. It’s we. I think we have a great shot.’”

Iginla’s is not the only new face popping up in the Olympics. Players like Joe Thornton, Mark Parrish and Eric Daze have been bumping the likes of Lemieux, Lindros and Joe Sakic down the stat sheets, and many of the league’s former top scorers are missing from the page.

Iginla may be the most striking. Markus Naslund, who is tied with Iginla in scoring with 58 points, is 28 and has been turning heads since last year, when he racked up 41 goals. Thornton, who has 56 points, has been claiming attention since the day he went No. 1 in the 1997 draft.

For parts of this season, Iginla has been the NHL’s top player, at least by the numbers. He has led the league in goals and in scoring for much of the last few months. He also leads the Flames in nearly every category, and remains among the team’s most physical players.

“He might be the best forward in the NHL,” said Wayne Gretzky, general manager of the Canadian Olympic team.

Iginla took up hockey at age 7. He had an unusual childhood until then--living in Edmonton, he had an American mother, a Nigerian father and maternal grandparents who helped raise him after his parents divorced.

Iginla excelled first at baseball and then in hockey. He finally decided the ice had his heart, although he remembers being troubled when friends occasionally questioned his ability.

“The other kids were like, there aren’t black players in the NHL, you’re never going to make it,” Iginla said. Occasionally, he would also hear racial taunting on the ice, “but nothing too major at all,” he said. “The real thing was the idea that there weren’t that many black players in the league, and it was something I wanted so badly. Fortunately, Grant Fuhr was right in Edmonton, and I could point to him.”

With a role model in Fuhr and the encouragement of his family, Iginla was able to speed up the junior ranks, and in 1995 he was drafted 11th overall by the Dallas Stars. He was traded to Calgary, and while he played well in his rookie year with the Flames, his improvement after that was slower. Even as recently as this summer, he was hardly a national name. “Let’s just say you could go a lot of places, especially in the States, and have no one know you,” Iginla said. Now, in the most high-profile month of his career, Iginla says he is ready--and eager to prove he belongs among the league’s best. Just like it says in the newspaper.