Jarome Iginla Jersey Card

Well, not only did my former favourite captain Jarome Iginla sign with the Colorado Avalanche on July 1st, he also believes it's the team that will lead him to the Stanley Cup; after almost doing it with the Calgary Flames when he was their undisputed leader and then failing as a mercenary with both the Pittsburgh Penguins and Boston Bruins, I'm not sure what that means for the Avs exactly; I'm also not convinced he alone can make up for losing Paul Stastny, but we'll see three years from now. I truly hope so, both for him and the Avs organization, and for Patrick Roy and Joe Sakic as managers.

As I mentioned in May, his team wins are impressive and lack just one Cup, as he has just about everything else: two Memorial Cups with the Kamloops Blazers, and many gold medals with Team Canada, including at the World Juniors (1996, where he was also the tournament's MVP), World Championships (1997), World Cup (2004) and Olympics (2002 and 2010).

He would also have made the Olympic team in 2014 if I'd been in charge, as this would have been my line-up:

Rick Nash - Jonathan Toews (captain) - Jeff Carter
Jamie Benn - Sidney Crosby - Martin St. Louis
John Tavares - Ryan Getzlaf - Corey Perry
Matt Duchene - Patrice Bergeron - Jarome Iginla (alternate)
(James Neal - Jason Spezza / Mike Richards as reserves)

Duncan Keith - Drew Doughty (alternate)
Marc-Édouard Vlasic - Shea Weber
Jay Bouwmeester - P.K. Subban
(Alex Pietrangelo - Brent Seabrook as reserves)

Roberto Luongo - Corey Crawford (Mike Smith as reserve)

(Too many centers? Sure. Also: no Leafs or Jets. And no Sharks attackers. No perennial chokers.)

But not just the consummate leader and team player, Iginla is also a 500-goal, 1200-point man with a ton of NHL hardware who already has a seat reserved as a first-ballot Hall Of Famer when he retires, and will likely see his number retired by the Flames the minute he does. He's already their career leader for goals, points and games played, and is second only to Al MacInnis in assists. Between 1998 and 2008, only Jaromir Jagr scored more goals than he did in the whole league.

I thought I had posted this card of his earlier, but it seems not; it's from Fleer's 2005-06 Fleer Ultra set by Upper Deck, and is #DMJ-JI of the Difference Makers sub-set, with an awesome 2-colour jersey swatch possibly from the sleeve of the Flames' white uniform, pictured on the front of the card:

He's sporting the captain's 'C', a sight I was so used to seeing that he looks weird without it on all of his new teams.