[dash_pinched]

Apologies if already posted...

Digging deeper into the numbers, an argument can be made that Iginla is one of the top 10 goal-scorers in history, possibly one of the top five.

To illustrate why Iginla statistically ranks higher than 19th among goal-scorers, consider the two players immediately ahead of him: Jari Kurri, who scored 601 goals, and Dino Ciccarelli, who scored 608.

Those Hall of Fame members began their careers in the 1980-81 season and were nearing their end when Iginla made his debut in 1996-97. That means Kurri and Ciccarelli scored their 600-plus goals in the high-scoring 1980s, when scoring was 25 percent higher than it is today, and avoided most of the low-scoring "dead puck" era Iginla had to contend with. That makes it unfair to compare their goal totals with Iginla's in absolute terms.

When making adjustments for the differences in average NHL scoring levels, Iginla moves up to fifth since the 1967 expansion, and Kurri and Ciccarelli drop to 31st and 26th.

http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=7...d=nhl:topheads