My Sportsman Choice: Jarome Iginla

By Stephen Cannella

Jarome Iginla mesmorized an entire nation of hockey lovers. Lou Capozzola/SI  Chris Stone: Red Sox Nation, you've earned this one  Paul Zimmerman: Boy Wonder brought Boston a title  B.J. Schecter: Red Sox captured Boston's heart  Richard Deitsch: The Babe had a big presence in '04  Rick Reilly: Big Papi did it all for the world champs  Jeffri Chadiha: A reward for reversing The Curse  Lisa Altobelli: Ramirez never took anything seriously  • Sportsman of the Year archive

It's not breaking news that they take their hockey seriously in Canada, but even for a people with a few gaps in their national dental plate, this was unusual. On the evening of one of the travel days during the Stanley Cup finals, channel-surfing viewers across Canada may have stumbled upon a half-hour conversation between Jarome Iginla, captain of the upstart Calgary Flames, and Peter Mansbridge, gravitas-dripping news sage and iconic face of the CBC. This was no soft-focus celebrity gabfest: Mansbridge, the Walter Cronkite of the Great White North, is the nation's principal network news anchor. Try to envision Tom Brokaw spending 30 primetime minutes with Curt Schilling or Allen Iverson, and you get an idea of the esteem Iginla is held in by his fellow citizens.

 "I couldn't find a single person who could say a bad thing about Jarome," Mansbridge told one of the Calgary papers afterward. "He offers leadership, commitment to community and so many other things. Plus, he wears a visor! Now, that's a Canadian to be proud of."

There are many reasons Iggy, as he's known above the 49th parallel, is my choice for Sportsman of the Year, not counting the fact that every Canadian mother would be thrilled to see him accompany her daughter through the front door. Iginla didn't break any curses, set any world records or even win a championship in 2004. (Though he did haul the Flames, a skill-challenged team with no business escaping the first round of the playoffs, to a seventh game in the Cup finals.) All he did was prop up a flagging, troubled sport and, for a few giddy weeks in late spring, carry the hopes of a hockey-besotted nation on his back. He represented both entities with grace and humility along the way, establishing himself as the role model we're always looking for among our athletes.

If only anyone south of Lake Placid had been watching. On the ice Iginla cemented his burgeoning reputation as the best player in the world. He's the textbook Canadian hockey star, a good bet to come out of every game with a Gordie Howe hat trick: a goal, an assist and a fight. No one in the NHL has scored more goals the past three seasons -- he led the league with 41 in 2003-04 -- and no one plays with as rich a combination of flash, grace and grit. He led all scorers with 14 playoff goals; he also set the tone for Calgary's cannonball run through the playoffs with well-timed fights in each of the first three rounds against the Flames' Western Conference opponents.

Iginla's legend was dipped in bronze in Game 5 of the finals, when he played a stunning 31 minutes in a 3-2 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning. Seven of those minutes came in a frenetic overtime period that ended with what will forever be known in Calgary as The Shift, a tour de ice which lasted either exactly a minute (if you believe the Flames staff's stopwatch) or closer to twice that (if you believe the retellings in the Calgary dressing room and the city's papers). It was an ode to rollicking old-time hockey: Iginla roaring end to end and corner to corner, losing his helmet in a collision behind the Tampa Bay net, then launching a blistering slap shot into traffic. A teammate banged in the rebound for the game-winner, and the Flames were within a single game of bringing the Cup home to Canada for the first time in 11 years.

This was a player capable of skating along the edge of a violent game without dragging his sport over the cliff. (Are you listening, Todd Bertuzzi?) What more could Canada expect from a native son? How about a tireless ambassador off the ice, someone who's unfailingly polite with fans and media and devoted to charitable works great and small. Iginla is the rare star capable of macro- and micro-appeal: The legend of The Shift was complemented by another mythic-sounding tale making the rounds during the playoffs about Iginla responding to a three-year-old's greeting and spending an hour the night before a Western Conference final game chatting up a wedding party and signing autographs at a Vancouver restaurant.

A leading man who's equal parts Pollyanna and Paul Bunyan is almost too good to be true for a sport uniquely capable of shooting itself in the foot -- indeed, one of the tragedies of the NHL's labor strife is its hijacking of a season in Iginla's prime. As was frequently noted during the playoffs, Iginla's surname means "big tree" in the Nigerian dialect of Yoruba, the language of his ancestors. There's no better choice for a sportsman to tower over the athletic landscape.

Sports Illustrated will announce the 2004 Sportsman of the Year winner on FOX on November 28. Check back every weekday until then to read more Sportsman picks from SI writers.