Iginla ♥

So here's the thing: the Calgary Flames are really really terrible. Or, OK, that's an exaggeration, because they aren't the Oilers or the Wild (hello, regression, glad to see you've arrived) or the Blue Jackets (sorry, Erin!) or whatever, so they're just on the bad side of mediocre, I guess. They certainly aren't a good hockey team, not by any measure. I spend most of their games pondering just how much I hate hockey. And knitting. And if that isn't the measure of how terrible a hockey game is, then I don't know what is.

Massacre in Beantown. Photo: Elsa/Getty Images.

And there's a lot of things wrong with the Flames. They obviously aren't truly a losing-by-9-to-the -Bruins team, but they aren't a Red-Wings-and-Canucks-beating team either. They are poorly coached, and their roster is a hot mess even when half the team isn't in the sick bay, and management doesn't seem particularly inclined to do much about it. 'Cause, you know, Blair Jones isn't actually the answer.

All of which is to say that most of the time, I really really despise this team. There are a handful of players I have soft spots for, of course. I know Bouwmeester is overpaid, but he's also pretty good at hockey. Mickis makes me smile. I like most of the young guys in the lineup, though that's probably a function of them being new and therefore a source of hope, however faint it might be. And then there's Jarome Iginla.

Last night, Iginla became just the 42nd player in the history of the NHL (a league that involves something like 700 players and has been in existence for nearly 100 years, let's not forget) to score 500 career goals, and only the 15th to do so with a single team. This is a guy who has scored 30 or more goals in 10 consecutive seasons, who has two goal-scoring titles, a most outstanding player award, two olympic gold medals, and six invitations to the NHL All-Star Game. He is a future HOFer on a team that has lacked stars—and for long stretches even decent hockey players—for him to skate alongside pretty much since he arrived in the league.

That's not why he's the franchise player, though. Franchise players are more than that: they are stand-up guys, guys who face the media after tough losses, and politely try to bail out drunk "reporters"in scrums. They sign autographs for kids even when they'd rather go home to their own, and put up hockey-mad fans in the family hotel when they hear those fans are sleeping in their car. Well, OK, they probably don't all do that, but Iginla does, and those things just add to the reasons that Flames fans are lucky to call Iginla their own for so long.

I'll admit it: I got a bit teary when he notched No. 500 last night. It has been a miserable season for Flames fans. And last year was too, and the year before that, and next year probably won't be much better. The Iginla trade rumours aren't going to go away, no matter how many times the organization insists he isn't going anywhere. And even though the part of me that became a Flames fan because of Iginla is heartbroken even at the thought of it, it's at war with the part that desperately wants to see Iginla lift the Stanley Cup.

He deserves it.