Meeting Jarome Iginla & Photomatching His Helmet

Clearly, I’m a Jarome Iginla fanboy and I’ll share the reason why.  I was at an Anaheim Angels game back in 1998.  In line for concessions, 12-year-old me is contemplating nachos or Red Vines.  As I’m deep in thought, Jarome Iginla just paid for two ice creams and is walking right past me in line back to his seats.  I can’t believe it!  

As he walked by, all I could blurt out is, “Are you Jarome Iginla???”  He smiled and seemed pretty surprised that anyone recognized him at a baseball game (The Flames were in town to play the Ducks in a preseason game the following night).  I asked if I could get his autograph; he said of course and I went running to the nearest usher for a pen.  When I handed him the pen and ticket stub; he handed me his ice creams to hold.  It was a pretty surreal moment to be getting an autograph of one of your hockey heroes.  

He personalized the autograph AND spelled my name right???  It was long before the days of smartphones so I don’t have a selfie or photo with him but luckily I’ve kept the ticket stub after all these years.

It sounds cliche to say but it's 100% true; taking a minute out of his day made me a fan for life.  So of course I was ecstatic when the Kings finally acquired Iginla in March of 2017.  I had been calling on the Kings to acquire Iginla for years on this blog.  Better late than never! 

 

I have a few Kings memorabilia items.  Not many.  A handful of sticks from some randoms like Oscar Moller and Erik Ersberg.  A Brian Boyle stick that is about as tall as my doorway.  But my memorabilia collecting days for the most part has stopped mainly because it’s gotten so darn expensive.  But every once in a while I’ll browse the Kings Game Used website or one of their parking lot sales for a deal.

 

At one of the parking lot sales, I was able to grab a Jarome Iginla helmet.  I think I paid $75-$100 for it.  It didn’t come with any Certificate of Authenticity but I figured I was never selling it so that’s not a big deal.   I'm not that familiar with how many helmets are issued to the players over a season but I just assumed this was a practice helmet or a backup helmet (if such things exist).

But earlier this week, I was looking at the helmet on top of my bookshelf and wondered if I could photomatch it to any game action.  I started Google image searching for hi-res Iginla photos which is probably the hardest part of the process (especially when you're trying to photomatch a helmet).  And secondly, a black helmet seems to reflect every light source in the arena which makes it really hard to match any scuffs.  You start to think you see something but you're not sure and then soon enough you're cross-eyed looking at your monitor.

Putting on my Sherlock Holmes detective glasses; I found a few distinct markings on the helmet:

• The second #8 on the front of the helmet has a notch cut out of it on the bottom and is lifted a bit on the bottom right
• There's a small nick about 2 CM long on the right of the visor
• A small notch taken out of the right earhole about 1/3 way down the side bracket
• The bottom screw on the right side of the visor may have been overtightened leaving a bit of corroding of the poly around the screw
• The CCM sticker on the bottom right side of the visor doesn't align well and a corner of the clear coat on the sticker is peeling up

So with that I think I was able to match the helmet to photos from at least three games towards the end of the 2016-17 season.  Or again, maybe I'm just wanting to see things that aren't there.  Who knows?!

3/23/2017 vs. Winnipeg

4/2/2017 vs. Arizona

4/6/2017 vs. Calgary

I might be crazy after spending hours researching photos and documenting it.  But it was fun nonetheless.  Again, that one minute Jarome Iginla took to ask 12-year-old me my name and sign an autograph has me writing close to a 1,000 words on how awesome he is 22 years later.