The Dance of Jokinen and Iginla
By Kent Wilson
13 years ago
It wasn’t too long ago Darryl Sutter acquired Olli Jokinen to be the Flames vaunted "#1 center" – you know, the mythical White Whale the org has been fruitlessly searching for since Sutter took the helm.
We all know how that went (or continues to go if you will). Now the team is searching for ways to balance one against the other since together they are the equivalent of two anchors on a rowboat.
Randy Sportak wonders if Iginla is ready to roll in his article this morning. Jarome has been outchancing the bad guys recently even though the pucks haven’t been going in and it’s probably only a matter of time before his current 4.4% SH% jumps back up to career norms.
“The last couple of games, it feels like it’s coming,” said Iginla, whose struggles have been a major focus the past couple of weeks. “That’s probably the most scoring chances I’ve had in a long time.
“Our line, we had a ton of scoring chances, and the only thing we can do is just stick with it.
“If you get enough chances, they’ll go in.
I would just like to have had them gone in already.”
That’s from the article. And fair enough, Jarome is sitting in the black in terms of both possession and scoring chances thus far. The flack he’s catching is only marginally related to his on-ice play. There’s no question that, with a few more bounces, he’d be a PPG player and there would be a lot less anger towards his play around here and on messageboards.
Of course, one of the reasons that Jarome is generating some nice underlying numbers is Jokinen, Bourque and Hagman are getting fed to the wolves to give him the high ground every night. Jokinen talks about his new role as a checking center in a Scott Cruickshank article this morning.
"I try to score every game, but the biggest thing is playing in a team concept," says Jokinen, who, with six points in 13 dates, sits sixth on the Flames’ charts. "I just want to win. For me, it doesn’t matter if I score 10 goals or 40 goals, I want to be part of a winning team. I’ve never been part of a winning team in the NHL. That’s all we care about in here, you know.
Blah, blah, etc, etc.
TWO THINGS HERE
1.) Jokinen is in this role by default. With him and Jarome consistently sucking together, that forces Stajan to be Jarome’s pivot against other second lines. Backlund is a 21 year old kid and certainly not going to face the big boys. Craig Conroy is a 4th line, 7 ES minute per night guy (in the eyes of the coaching staff, even though I don’t completely agree). There’s nowhere for Olli to go.
2.) I suspect that Rene Bourque is actually the guy being matched against other teams big lines, with Jokinen being his usual center. Both Sutter and Keenan rated Bourque as a hard minutes option previosly and I Jokinen is simply along for the ride (see above).
I’m unsure how long the current state of affairs will continue. On the one hand, the Flames have more than $9M in forwards – all of whom were expected to be "scoring options" on this club – getting killed on a nightly basis. All of Jokinen, Hagman and Bourque are underwater in terms of possession and scoring chances, with each subsequent evening adding ballast to the downward spiral. So yeah, Jokinen et al are the shut-down line currently, but they aren’t really shutting anyone down.
On the other hand, I don’t really know what the alternative is. Iginla was struggling against the big boys previously and the new assignments seem to at least be freeing him up (although the results aren’t there yet). Brent Sutter’s options absent Daymond Langkow are limited: unless he wants to move Conroy up the rotation and push one of Backlund or Jokinen to 4th-line like role (unlikely), the team is more or less stuck at where it is currently.
Anyways, here’s hoping pucks start going in for Jarome. I have a feeling it’s going to be a mercilessly long season for Bourque et al, so it’s imperative that Iginla start taking advantage of things sooner rather than later.
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