This might be a hard profile for a litany of reasons, chief among them that while I have had at least one guy listed that would likely be far ahead of 8th overall, I’m slightly terrified that I could get your hopes up with this kid in particular because he is soaring up draft boards on account of his strong play…and even stronger name.
So let’s talk about Tij Iginla; a kid who had a year so good that he might end up propelling himself out of the top 10 and into the top 5.
Who is he?
Tij Iginla is a Dual-Citizenship Canadian Forward who measures up at 6’0 even, and weighs in at 183 pounds. He played this year in the Western Hockey League for the Kelowna Rockets. He has significant ties to the NHL on account of his father; Calgary Flames legend Jarome Iginla.
What’s he good at?
Skating agility and Making Plays.
Tij’s circumstances of birth will mean that just about everything he does will be traced back to his power forward father, and every completed check will turn a lot of people into clapping seals, pointing at him and going “JAROME 2.0! JAROME 2.0!”, which I feel like is tremendously unfair to Tij. Sure, he has a physical element to his game, but what makes Tij Iginla so interesting as a prospect is so much more than reminding you of dad; it’s giving even low-quality plays a chance to become something special by willing them into existence.
Iginla’s puck possession skills are something to envy; able to maneuver the puck around traffic whether on the boards or on the and often straight through it using some truly explosive agility to fool defenders and slip straight past them. His strength on the puck makes him an annoying player to put up with the offensive end; as he’s able to muscle off and away from defenders pressure with efficiency and urgency, keeping plays alive with sheer dogged determination to continue them in order to get off a great pass…or to do the thing he found he was pretty good at; scoring goals.
Iginla’s shot is awesome; powerful and smooth in equal measure, he’s able to release it from just about any position he can face the goalie and from anywhere on the ice; which really screws with the goalie’s ability to adequately stop it or for defenders to block it. Sure, the puck might be bouncing, but his hand-eye can turn a squibbed puck into a shot-for and a damn good one at that. But add in that need to keep plays alive and his stick skills? His ways and means of dissecting defenses and goaltenders are many, he makes his choices quickly, and a near-50 goal pace in Kelowna’s regular season and well-above point-per-game playoffs made him thee dangerous part of the Rocket’s attack; one that was never truly solvable. His production was to the point that it sailed past his own father’s draft year!
If his tendencies towards being a slippery, goalscoring menace are nurtured, Iginla could be a marvel to watch for your team…and infuriating for everybody else.
What does he need to work on?
Physicality…to a point.
Tij is going to eternally be compared to his father Jarome for as long as he’s in the NHL, and I feel like it would be extremely unfair to look at these two guys and say their styles are anything alike in ways beyond their work ethic and playmaking ability; but it’s going to be super hard to separate them from each other for a little bit until Tij can make his play style known to the world…and that’s gonna be tough for some to handle because Tij isn’t really all that much of a power forward.
Sure, Iginla will throw hits and stick up for teammates and invite body contact in order to keep pucks, but physicality is not his bread and butter. He likes using short explosive movements in the defensive zone as well as slick maneuvering of the puck in order to escape danger. Is that bad? Hardly! There are plenty of players in the NHL that do this exact thing every other day during the regular season. He will need to either hyperfocus down on the timing of such plays in order to survive a much faster and brutal NHL or get up to around 200ish pounds to survive the oncoming hit, but given his willingness to handle and initiate body contact, that is comparatively a very small ask for a player with his work ethic.
More concrete criticism of his game might involve his top end speed being a bit on the slower side, which will require a little extra work with the skating coaches in order to unlock, and because of his offensive contribution, he can be sometimes caught a little ahead of plays in trying to create a fast break when his team re-establishes possession of the puck. Further, given his skillset and goalscoring abilities, he really should be able to attack the net a little better than he has away from breakouts, but these can be worked into his game by upping the tempo of play and getting him used to it.
This is where having a famous alumni can kind of mess with your draft stock; the memories of Jarome are so deep in some people’s minds they can’t help but compare, and might find that wanting.
My Verdict
Draft him.
Look, I know I’ve got A Guy that I’m personally biased towards, but if he hasn’t been picked by 8 and nobody else has fallen considerably, you should pick him and get him as up to speed in one last year with Kelowna or in his first year in Coachella as quickly as you can.
And again, as much as I really really want to avoid using his dad’s career as a barometer for success, his junior career almost perfectly mirrors it to this point and arguably surpasses it…though we’ll have to wait and see if he can beat Jarome’s 136-point 1995-96 season. If he can reach even 60% of what his dad was able to acheive…he’s gonna be a damn fine NHLer. He’s got all the tools to do that and then some.
Pray that 7 other teams decide that he didn’t need to be on their team and make them pay for it dearly.
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