Sorry, Jarome Iginla won’t be re-joining the Calgary Flames (yet)

In the annals of Calgary hockey history, there are maybe a handful of universally beloved figures. The most prominent among that handful may be Jarome Iginla, longest-serving captain in Calgary Flames history, hero of the 2004 Stanley Cup run, and 2020 inductee into the Hockey Hall of Fame.

While Iginla has gotten into coaching since his retirement in 2018, we regret to inform you that he won’t be re-joining the Flames organization. At least, not quite yet.

The 45-year-old Iginla was in town this weekend for a promotional event, where he guest-coached a local under-15 team in Chestermere on Saturday.

TSN’s Salim Valji shared a few details of a chat he had with Iginla.

Iginla officially retired from the NHL in July 2018, ending a playing career that saw him score 625 goals, register 1,300 points, and effectively do everything a player can do from an individual or team level aside from win the Hart Trophy or capture the Stanley Cup. (He got close in 2004.) He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame as part of the 2020 class in his first year of eligibility. The Flames retired his jersey number (12) in 2019.

Since retiring, Iginla has gotten into coaching his three kids – Jade, Tij and Joe. He originally stuck around the Boston area for that reason, leading to that amazing video where he was mistaken for a random bystander during an interview about snowy weather, but after four seasons he (and his family) moved to the Kelowna area, where he began coaching at the Rink Hockey Academy in 2021-22.

But if the idea was that Iginla wanted to spend time coaching his kids, he’s running out of kids to coach. Jade (born in 2004), a Under-18 World Championship gold medallist with Canada in 2022, just finished her freshman season at Brown University. Tij (born in 2006 and a silver medallist at the 2022 World Under-17 Hockey Challenge) is in the midst of his first full season with the Western Hockey League’s powerhouse Seattle Thunderbirds, and he’s NHL Draft eligible in 2024. Joe (born in 2008) will be eligible for the WHL Bantam Draft this year and could be a full-time WHLer starting in 2024-25.

In other words: coaching elsewhere may become a serious consideration for Iginla once his youngest child moves away from Kelowna and potentially hits major junior in 2024-25. At which point, Iginla could be looking for a new challenge to tackle.

So if you’re hoping that Iginla could be part of a management or coaching shuffle with the Flames this summer, it’s probably not in the cards. At least not this summer.