Jarome Iginla was a special player and a special person.
He played over 1,500 games in the NHL for the Calgary Flames, Pittsburgh Penguins, Boston Bruins, Colorado Avalanche, and LA Kings.
He’s a six-time NHL All-star, and he scored 50 goals in a season on two occasions. He’s also one of seven players in NHL history to score 30 goals in 11 consecutive seasons and one of 20 who has scored 600 goals.
But more than anything, Iginla was a leader.
He won the Mark Messier Leadership Award, and there are so many stories about how competitive he was, and his teammates absolutely loved him for it.
But Iginla was also a great player, recognized by teams and the NHL for his community work. For instance, while he played with the Flames, he donated $2,000 to a Children’s hospital for every goal he scored.
He always took his time to make a fan’s day, and this story proves it more than anything.
Peter Maher, a longtime radio voice of the Flames, once shared that he had seen Iginla signing autographs for hours in the rain after a Game 6 win in the playoffs.
”In 2004, after the Flames won Game 6 to win their series against San Jose in the Western Conference final, I’ll always remember, I was leaving the building an hour or an hour-and-a-half after the game, and there was Jarome in the middle of that parking lot, in the rain, signing autographs for a bunch of kids that were out there,” Maher told the Calgary Sun.
”And not only was he signing autographs for them, but he was asking them how they were doing in school and things of that kind of a nature.”
For Maher, it was incredible that Iginla spent his night with the fans rather than anything.
”I was just amazed that on a night when the team was celebrating, Jarome still had time to stand in the rain and sign those autographs and ask questions of those young kids. I can remember that in my head as if it was yesterday,” he said.
