The other five individuals announced as part of the Quarter-Century Team were blueliners Nicklas Lidstrom and Zdeno Chara, and forwards Joe Sakic, Teemu Selanne and Joe Thornton. Not bad company to keep.

A product of St. Albert, an Edmonton suburb, Iginla shined with the Western Hockey League’s Kamloops Blazers and was selected by the Dallas Stars in the first round (11th overall) of the 1995 NHL Draft. He was traded to the Flames for Joe Nieuwendyk that December, and the rest is (franchise) history.

Iginla essentially re-wrote the Flames record books in terms of offensive performance, seemingly looking at what had been accomplished before him by players like Kent Nilsson, Hakan Loob and Theo Fleury and going “I can top that.” We know there’s a new generation of fans discovering the game, and to them we say this: we’re probably running out of hyperbole to describe how consistently great and occasionally downright dominant Iginla was.

He had 11 consecutive seasons of 30 goals or more. He had 13 consecutive seasons of 20 goals or more. He played a relentless physical style of hockey, but managed to avoid the type of wear and tear that tends to slow that type of player down. He led the NHL in goals twice, the first times a Flame has ever done that, and led the league in points once, in 2001-02, the only time a Flame has ever accomplished that feat.

And if you haven’t dusted off your DVD boxed set of the 2004 playoff run in awhile, here’s a glimpse at The Shift from Game 5 of the 2004 Stanley Cup Final, perhaps the best example of Iginla at the peak of his powers.

In Iginla’s entire NHL career, he had 625 goals and 1,300 points in 1,554 games. In just the 2000s, he had 556 goals and 1,148 points over 1,285 games. In just his Flames tenure during the 2000s, he had 456 goals and 943 points over 950 games. No matter how you want to slice it up, Iginla’s career was incredibly impressive. He retired in July 2018 having won essentially everything a high-end hockey player can win… aside from a Stanley Cup. He was a first-ballot inductee into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2020.

Iginla joined the Flames management group as special advisor to general manager Craig Conroy during the 2023 off-season, following Conroy’s promotion to GM. Iginla had spent the first few years of his retirement coaching his kids in high-level youth hockey.

The NHL’s Quarter-Century Team is being unveiled over the next little while, but it was built via a fan vote in February and March, with fans able to select from players that were announced as part of the first or second quarter-century teams for each of the NHL’s 32 member clubs. It’s a pretty fun initiative celebrating the last 25 years of NHL history.