Mark Spector

Mark Spector is a columnist for sportsnet.ca

Two great power forwards talk fixing Iggy and how longevity is hard to find in that role.

CALGARY -- He has evolved into the consummate Canadian hockey player.

A collection of size, shot, power, leadership and a devastating right hand that made us fall in love with players like Mark Messier, Wendel Clark, Brendan Shanahan and Eric Lindros, Jarome Iginla is everything we want in our players.

But suddenly, Iginla is 33 years old, and in the midst of what has to be his deepest, darkest slump in production.

It’s not that three goals in his first 16 games is so bad. He had two, once, in the opening 16 games of the 1999-2000 campaign. So this is only the second worst start to a season in his career.

It’s the totality of it all that must be gnawing at the best power forward of his generation. The fact that a streak of four goals in his past 32 games is sandwiched around his 33rd birthday — on Canada Day, no less — raises questions that every hockey player must eventually face.

There is a point in every career where the arrow begins to point down. Could this be that time for Jarome Iginla?

“There isn’t a great blueprint on what the aging body of a power forward does, because most guys don’t have the luxury of aging,” said Brendan Shanahan, a fine power forward himself who played 21 seasons and gathered 2,489 PIMs between 656 goals.

“Most are done after 14, 15 years. The (John) LeClairs, Cam Neely, Tim Kerr, Kevin Stevens… Their bodies broke down because of the way they played. Wendel Clark broke down even sooner because he played so much bigger than his body.”

So what of Iginla, who has somehow misplaced that ability to find the time and space he used to have?

He has plenty of years left, figures another prominent power winger of the day, Bill Guerin. But perhaps the time has come for Iginla to think his way around the rink, rather than instinctively run over opponents on his way to another 50-goal season.

“The biggest thing for me was knowing when to go out of my way to finish a hit, when to take a run at someone,” Guerin said on Tuesday. “Balancing that with, ‘Do I have something left in this shift to produce offence as well?’

“Jarome, he can change a game in so many different ways. With his shot, with his body. He can do it with his fists. What a great set of tools,” Guerin marveled. “When you’re a kid, ‘til your late 20s, you have energy for everything, Now you say, ‘If I go run this guy, I’ll have to shorten my shift…

“It gets more and more like that as you go on.”

Welcome to middle age, Jarome.

Time is not selective. You don’t get a break because you’ve heroically fought the giant Derian Hatcher in the ’04 playoffs, because you have been an honest ambassador of the game, or because you’ve worn a letter on your chest at two Olympic Games.

Or perhaps this is simply Iginla, the Mark Messier of his era, following the path saw Messier pot just 14 goals at the same age (in 46 games), but rebound for 47 and 36 the next two seasons.

“You’ll always be measured against the giant shadow you created for yourself,” said Shanahan, who now works for the NHL. “You can’t do the same things. You can’t say, ‘This is where I score my goals from.’ Or, ‘This is when I used to fight.’ It won’t work. You’ll become a mark.”

Shanahan sensed after a while that the rest of the league — under the guise of respect — was playing him.

“The players coming up respect you. I used to say ‘It’s hard to find a fight because no one (messes) with me anymore,” he recalls. “It used to be, someone would hit my centreman or stick a knee out at me, and I’d fight ‘em. As I got older, and I got more respect. It was easy to get 200 PIMs when I was 25, because there were a host of people who didn’t mind slew-footing me. When I was 35, there were way less.

“There’s that balance between earning space and people letting you sleep. When you realize people are letting you sleep, you have to do something about it. I always made sure I found myself a good fight early in the season, to show everyone I’d come ready to play.”

Iginla has one fight this season — on the ice. Who knows how many more behind closed doors with head coach Brent Sutter, who no doubt has his own take on how Iginla should be handling the delicate aging process.

“I fought Iggy once,” laughed Guerin. “It went well for about five punches, then it went south on me.”

Guerin sees plenty of player left in Iginla, but perhaps not as the front man every night in Calgary.

“He’s only 33, he could have seven or eight more years in the league,” Guerin said from New York, where he’s waiting for the phone call that could resume his own career. “He’s coming into a different part of his career. He could be better, but there’s got to be help.

“Nobody shoots the puck better comin' off the wing. Guys score goals like him, but they don’t bring the leadership, the toughness.”

Which brings us to the conclusion — of a column, and perhaps, of an NHL career spent exclusively with the Flames.

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Maybe the jumpstart Iginla needs lies in the computers of Central Registry. Perhaps the tonic his game needs lies in another NHL city.

“I moved too much. But sometimes moving isn’t all that bad of a thing,” Guerin said. “If you can stay with one organization your whole career and get it done, all the power to you.

“But, sometimes, a move rejuvenates you.”