LA moved quickly to replace Dwight King's roster spot (though not necessarily his role) by acquiring winger Jarome Iginla from the Colorado Avalanche for...wait for it...a conditional 2018 fourth-round pick. The Avs also retained half of the impending UFA's 5.33 million cap hit.
Condition on 4th round pick for Iginla is playoff related and potential Iggy resigns in LA.
Iginla is a name that has been associated with the Kings in trade rumors for a long time, but of course, the 39-year-old isn't a set-it-and-forget-it 30-goal guy anymore. In the last three seasons, his production has dropped from 29 goals to 22 to just eight this season -- coincidentally, the same number that Dwight King has at the moment.
So what does Iginla bring to the table? And how should he be used?
However, his ability to uncork it 5v5 has become more and more of an issue. Is his ability to find seams not as present anymore because of a lost step or two?
(iCF60 means Individual Corsi For/60. iSF60 means Individual Shots For/60.)
2014-15 is when he joined the Avalanche.
His individual 5v5 scoring chance rates have remained relatively stable throughout the years, so while the winger's not shooting as much, he's still getting his fair share of dangerous opportunities. So that's good.
Something else for LA to hang their hat on -- but haven't we heard this about every struggling Kings scorer over the past half-decade? -- Iginla is suffering his worst overall shooting % ever this season. His current 6.7% represents his lowest since he was a 20-year-old (8.4) and is well under his 2013-16 clip of 14.0.
So despite his advanced age, there's still some possible offensive upside here, which the Kings sorely need.
And while his skating has certainly declined over the years, he still displays decent burst. However, he labors a little to get up and down on the backcheck. He's certainly willing, but the legs don't always cooperate.
In some ways, Iginla represents a Bizarro Dwight King. King was a quality defensive contributor, but fell short offensively, whereas Iginla looks to be roughly the reverse.
So while King was a penalty-killing fixture, Iginla will spend all of his special teams time on the power play.
On the man advantage, Iginla's production is also slipping. He has just four power play tallies this season, after 13 last year. Reduced PP time has some role -- in his first two campaigns in Colorado, Iginla was deployed on the first unit. Recently, he's been demoted to the second group.
There might be some reason for the demotion though -- his 5v4 productivity has waned:
So perhaps the Kings hope for some turnaround here.
On the power play, Colorado has mostly used Iginla's right-handed shot as the left side half-boards or mid-ice point man in their 1-3-1 setup. Essentially, they try to set up his shot from the left wing or the blueline. In Los Angeles, Iginla should be competing for power play time with Dustin Brown and Marian Gaborik -- there are two second-unit winger spots for the three aging scorers. Brown has played net front effectively enough this season, so Gaborik may be the odd man out. Darryl Sutter can also opt for a four forwards-one defenseman construction.
Iginla also possesses the strength and size to be the net front man on the power play. However, it appears that he's been kept away from that role for years, judging by his worsening 5v4 "in-tight" scoring chances and average shot distance figures.
(iSCF60 means Individual Scoring Chances For/60. Avg.DIST means average shot distance.)
Perhaps he needs to be positioned closer to the net -- it worked for Gaborik in 2014.
In all, Sutter's best bet is to use Iginla roughly like how he used Vinny Lecavalier last year: A lot of 5v5 offensive zone starts and power play time. Curiously, Colorado didn't optimize the veteran sniper that way, as he was third most-used among team forwards in 5v5 defensive zone start %, (barely) ahead of even Gabriel Landeskog.
***
Fit, fit, fit. That's what Dean Lombardi stressed during today's Deadline press conference.
It probably explains why goal-starved LA didn't take a shot at productive, low-cost forwards like Thomas Vanek and P.A. Parenteau earlier.
Lombardi talking about Iginla's "competiveness" as being the difference maker compared to some of the other player's available at deadline
There's also a solid chance that he looks much better away from the Colorado Avalanche. There might not be a more disorganized bunch in all of hockey. Coming into LA's structure should reduce some of the weight on Iginla's shoulders.
I always go back to Rob Blake, and I said this at the time Blakey was here when I first got here. We weren’t a very good team, and quite frankly, Blakey wasn’t very good, either.
So a guy of his stature who’s always played on competitive teams won a Stanley Cup in Colorado, tries to come back to L.A., and as a lot of you people saw at the time, we had some gong shows going as we were building it, and he wasn’t very good. It looked like he was done.
But if a great player who…[sees] a light at the end of the tunnel, it’s like, well, yeah, you can say he still loves to play the game. But they play to win at that stage. And then when Blakey went to San Jose, and they had a really good team, he was one of their best players, and you would’ve never said that from watching him.
So what you’re hoping, too, is that taking [Iginla] out of there, giving him a fresh start, and having a chance to win again hopefully ignites him very similar to I think what happened to Blakey.
That said, it's hard to see Iginla impacting the Kings much. As shown above, this isn't Iginla circa 2006 or even 2016.
I also wonder why LA didn't keep both King and Iginla. Getting something for King before he walks as a free agent makes more sense for a rebuilding team. Who will replace his defensive value? It won't be Iginla.
Perhaps the Kings were angling for another deal, but they leave the Deadline with over 2.6 million in cap space.
So while I've grown in my support of the Ben Bishop deal, I'm not convinced Los Angeles is a better team with this re-shuffling of the deck. By my estimation, losing King and gaining Iginla cancel each other out.
We'll see if the sure-fire Hall of Famer can prove me wrong.
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