TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Loss Still Burns

ADVERTISEMENT

By CARTER GADDIS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 13, 2007

Updated: 12/13/2007 12:16 am

TAMPA - To Jarome Iginla, it seems like yesterday that he sat, distraught and exhausted, in the visitors locker room at the St. Pete Times Forum and listened to the fans of the Lightning celebrate a Stanley Cup championship.

The intermittent cheers that literally shook the building during the postgame euphoria still assault Iginla's senses like waves hitting the beach after a storm. And that song - Queen's ubiquitous "We Are the Champions" - rings in his head like a dirge on ice.

We are the champions, it mocked. Not Iginla's team. Not the Calgary Flames.

"Hearing them play 'We Are the Champions,' and hearing the roar of the crowd, knowing each cheer meant a different player was taking the Cup and skating around," Iginla said. "That was the hardest hockey memory I've had to go through."

It was June 7, 2004, the night Tampa Bay truly became Hockey Bay USA. More than three years later, Iginla and the Calgary Flames finally are back.

The lockout in 2004-05 and the peculiarities of the NHL schedule kept the Flames and every other team from the Northwest Division out of Tampa for the past two seasons.

Today's game is not, by any stretch, a rematch. The teams met last season in Calgary for the first time since those playoffs, a 3-2 Tampa Bay victory, but even that game lacked the immediacy - the passion - that a season-after rematch might have produced.

Still, there are remnants of those teams left to try to rekindle what's left of what could have been a beautiful East-West rivalry.

The most recognizable of the seven current Flames who played for the 2004 Cup runners-up are Iginla, goalie Miikka Kiprusoff, defenseman Robyn Regehr and a player who has since left for the L.A. Kings and returned to Calgary, center Craig Conroy.

For the Lightning, only Vinny Lecavalier, Brad Richards, Marty St. Louis and injured players Dan Boyle and Tim Taylor have remained with the team since the Cup season. Cup winners Brad Lukowich and Andre Roy left and returned.

Gone are Ruslan Fedotenko, who scored both goals in Tampa Bay's 2-1 Game 7 victory; goalie Nikolai Khabibulin, who bolted for Chicago through free agency; defenseman Pavel Kubina, who signed last season with Toronto; and captain Dave Andreychuk, who skated off into retirement toward a certain future Hall of Fame induction.

For some, the Cup victory won't be fully appreciated until long after they play their final shift in the NHL.

"You can sit with your grandkids and just visit when you're done with hockey," said Fedotenko, who signed this past summer with the Islanders. "Right now, we just have a new season, you have new challenges, new goals, all that stuff. So, I think you don't even have time to really think back and enjoy that moment."

For others, like Kubina, it took several months even to realize what they'd accomplished.

"When you do something like that, you don't fully understand what we accomplished until it has had some time to sink in," Kubina said. "There are so many great memories and I made some great friends, even though a lot of them are gone from that team now, there are still a lot of great memories."

Gone, too, is defenseman Cory Sarich, who signed a five-year, $18 million free-agent contract this past summer.

With Calgary.

He acknowledged Wednesday that he hasn't engaged in much detailed conversation with his new teammates about the way the 2003-04 season ended. Which means it hasn't come up that Sarich was responsible, at least in part, for inflicting Iginla's worst hockey memory upon him.

"It's something that we haven't talked a lot about because it was two opposite ends of the spectrum," Sarich said. "I don't think there would ever be a common ground in that discussion."

Perhaps not surprising, considering Sarich cherishes the very same moment with his every fiber.

"That's the pinnacle of it all," Sarich said. "Skating around on the ice - unbelievable. It just seems kind of like a blur right now. I specifically remember holding the Cup myself. I know it was short-lived because my teammates wanted to get at it, too. I didn't want to be a hog out there."

A lot of water has passed under the Zamboni since that moment.

"It's so far removed, I guess, for everybody from the year the Cup was won," Sarich said. "I'm sure there's some guys that are chomping at the bit to get out there, but it's just a different atmosphere now."

One of those guys sure to be chomping at the bit is Iginla, who might have won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoff MVP instead of Richards if things had bounced differently.

Through Game 5 of the Cup final, when Calgary had built a 3-2 series lead to move to the verge of a title, Iginla had 13 goals and nine assists in the postseason. He didn't record a point during Tampa Bay's victories in Games 6 and 7.

He said last week that the way that series ended still motivates him.

Even after all these years.

"To be that close," he said, "more than ever, it lights the fire."

Reporter Erik Erlendsson

contributed to this report. Carter Gaddis can be

reached at (813) 259-8291

or igaddis@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT