Last night Iginla reached 1000 points for his career. This might not seem like all that much, especially given the large number of people who have achieved this mark since the 1980s. It puts him 77th all-time. He achieved this in more than 1103 games, making him slightly less than a point-a-game player, 103rd best PPG all time, which doesn’t sound very good. His exact numbers:

480G, 520A for 1000 points in 1103 games, +60. In addition to being 103rd all-time in PPG, he is also 69th in GPG. He is 33.

• Provided he doesn’t get a concussion he will reach 500 goals next year. His per game numbers will no doubt decline from now on as his career numbers continue to grow. So he will not be particularly high up on the GPG or PPG lists when he retires. I still think there is a very strong case for him to go in the HoF.
• He has spent the majority of his career playing in a league where scoring was quite low. It is only since the lockout that scoring has been up during his career and a couple of his best years were before the lockout. In the statistical measure of adjusted goals – a measure that attempts to assess how a player would perform over an average 82 game season, instead of how they performed in their given era – Iginla is 22nd all-time.
• He has the most goals and points of any player drafted in the late ’90s. The only player who is even close is Thornton, who had two very big seasons, and who, unlike Iginla, is a notorious choker when it comes to big games.
• His contemporaries with better GPG than him have all been drafted since 2000, and so spent more of their careers in the more wide open post-lockout era. There are only 4 players drafted in the entire decade of the ’90s with better GPGs: Bondra, Jagr, Lindros, Palffy. Iginla is certainly a more complete player than Bondra of Ziggy.
• He is only the 10th player to score 30 goals in ten straight years. The others? Bossy, Dionne, Espo, Gartner, Gretzky, Bobby Hull, Jagr, Kurri and Sittler. All HoFers except Jagr, who will be. And only Jagr played part of his career in such a low scoring era.
• Nobody scored more goals in the NHL between 2000 and 2010 than Iginla. And Iginla scored the third most points of anyone in that decade.
• He should have won the Hart in 2002. (He was left off the ballot by a voter who wanted Theodore to win.) He was nominated two other times.
• He won the 2002 Art Ross.
• He won two Rocket Richards.
• He led the 2004 playoffs in goal scoring.
• He was the runner up rookie of the year in 1997.
• In addition to his NHL achievements, he has won two Olympic Gold medals, a World Cup, a World Championship and a World Juniors. He won two memorial cups.

Despite his ridiculous number of middle names, he has been the best or second best right wing of the last decade and a half. He belongs in the hall. We can now say “future hall of famer” when we talk about him.