Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperMatt18
I love Iggy but he was never “The face of the league” in the same vein as guys like Crosby, Ovechkin, or McDavid.
He had a 3 to 4 year stretch where maybe he was considered the best player in the league (2002-2006) but he was never on the level of one of the generational type talents.
Even then I don’t think he was the unanimous best player in the league. Guys like Sakic, Forsberg, Thornton, St.Louis, Naslund, Sundin, Jagr, all have similar or better point totals in that time, won individual awards, or won cups.
That was the period where the NHL didn’t really have a generational talent playing that was the face of the league. Gretzky had retired in 1999. Lemieux was around but not consistently playing. Crosby hadn’t started until 2006.
Honestly if I had to pick the guys that were the face of the league in that time it was Sakic and Yzerman as the faces of the epic battles Colorado and Detroit had in that era.
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C'mon, Iggy topped them all except for Super Mario and Mullet Jagr in his period of time. Think about it, it took the French guys to steal the MVP from him when he received the Pearson Award that year for best player in the league as voted by all his peers in the NHL! You even heard the on-ice comment after Trevor Linden played his last game as a Canucks. You can't deny the legendary status of Iggy in the league. If he was elsewhere other than as a Flames on a way better team, I think his status would be even grander. There's also some on this board and previous Flames boards who wanted Iggy traded before his prime and during his prime years. Totally ridiculous!