Tij Iginla is ranked in that territory by pundits after totalling 47 goals and 84 points in 64 regular season WHL games with the Rockets
Twenty-nine years after being a first-round pick himself, Jarome Iginla is learning about draft day dad stress.
“I will be nervous when it comes,” said the father of Tij Iginla, the Kelowna Rockets forward who is expected to be an early selection Friday when the NHL Draft kicks off in Las Vegas. “It will be about us wanting it to go well for Tij and just being in that atmosphere.
“I was so nervous for my draft. I couldn’t speak. My draft year, I had gone up and down the rankings and didn’t know where I would end up. Tij started a little further down and it’s been fun to see him move up. Who knows how it ends or what team, but we’re excited to see whatever team it is.”
He played 16 of his 20 years in the NHL with Calgary, and is the franchise’s all-time leader in regular season games played (1,219), goals (525), and points (1,095) — and all three by ample margins. The Flames retired his jersey in 2019, and he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame the following year.
Jarome, 46, coaches at Rink Hockey Academy Kelowna these days, but last summer he also signed on to be a special advisor to Flames general manager Craig Conroy. And that’s yet another layer to this story.
Tij, who had 47 goals and 84 points in 64 regular season WHL games with the Rockets and then nine goals and 15 points in 11 playoff match-ups, is No. 6 on Elite Prospects’ own pre-draft picks. Among the others, TSN’s Bob McKenzie has him at No. 10 and TSN’s Craig Button slots him at No. 3. He’s a 6-foot, 192-pound left-handed shooter who played mostly wing with Kelowna but has experience at centre as well.
“Wherever he’s drafted, there will be so many positives about it and that’s what we’ll focus on,” Jarome said. “If it’s Calgary — and I don’t know if it will be or not — it would be lots of great things. It’s a passionate fan base. I loved living there. My wife loved living there. So many great things. But there are so many great things about every NHL organization.
“Once it’s your team, you focus on those and work on getting better. He’ll put pressure on himself, wherever it is. He wants to be good. He wants to play. He wants to contribute. He wants to be a player. It’s not like he’s going to go somewhere and relax.”
Jarome says he helps with the Flames in various facets including scouting, but maintains he’s staying out of the talk about that first-round pick and his son. He has said that he will start draft day in the stands with Tij and the rest of their family and friends rather than being at the Flames’ table.
“People ask me all the time if I know where he’s going. I don’t know,” Jarome said. “I don’t know if it works like that. I don’t know if people tell people. The only person who might know is Macklin Celebrini (the projected No. 1 pick to San Jose). Otherwise, I don’t think anyone knows any of them.”
There will be a pressure on the Flames from their fan base to select Tij if he’s still available. If he’s selected by the Flames, Tij will be an even bigger focal point than your standard first rounder to the club’s supporters.
It wouldn’t be a totally unfamiliar phenomenon for him. As Jarome points out, the offspring of former NHLers do have added eyes and extra expectations coming through the ranks. Tij is the middle of three hockey-playing siblings, flanked by Jade, 19, a winger who played for the Canadian women’s Under-18 team a couple of seasons ago and was the leading scorer for the Brown University Bears this past campaign, and Joe, 15, a forward who was a first-round pick in the 2023 WHL Draft by the Edmonton Oil Kings.
“Pressure is something for all players in all sport. You feel pressure and it helps you grow and you learn from it and you have to manage it,” Jarome added.
Rockets coach Kris Mallette told Postmedia back in March that whoever drafts Tij “is going to get a player where you tell him what he needs to do to get to the NHL and he’s going to do what he can to get there as quickly as possible.
“The player you see in games is the same one you see every single day. His motor doesn’t stop,” Mallet continued. “He works extremely hard. He’s extremely dedicated. He’s an elite shooter already, but he gets much of that from his work ethic.”