2024 NHL Draft player profile: Tij Iginla, Kelowna Rockets

What hasn’t been said about Tij Iginla’s on-ice prowess?

The Kelowna Rockets star vaulted up the draft boards after a breakout season in the WHL that saw him pot a team-leading 47 goals and another 37 assists for 84 points in 64 games.

Eight of those goals would stand as game-winners with Iginla playing a clutch role in Kelowna’s push to the postseason.

“He just doesn’t have an off button,” Rockets Head Coach Kris Mallette said. “He’s very hungry on pucks. He’s very hard to get away from it. Wants to score a lot of goals.

“I think that he kind of dragged guys into that pile as the season wore on, and was like, ‘Guys, we want to play as a team and we want to have success. We’ve got to up this competitiveness,’ – and we saw results because of it.”

This isn’t just a game-time thing.

If anything, Iginla’s competitive fire is even more evident at practice and off the ice.

Mallette says scouts would attend practices just to see the star winger and team Captain Gabriel Szturc’s crank up the intensity in drills and scrimmages.

“Those two would go head to head and the battles that they had were epic,” Mallette added. “Guys see that, and it’s contagious. What separates the good from the great is what you do every day, day in, day out. You can’t take any days off and that’s where Tij is at and it’s at such a young age, it’s quite remarkable.”

One can only imagine the battles that have gone on between the Iginla brood, led by Hockey Hall-of-Famer and Kamloops Blazers great Jarome, his eldest daughter, Jade, a burgeoning star with Brown University, Tij, and youngest brother Joe, an Edmonton Oil Kings prospect who netted three goals and two assists in five WHL games this season.

“When I see my brother or sister shooting pucks in the garage, then, you know, I’m going after,” Tij said of the sibling rivalry at the 2024 NHL Combine. “I think that’s been good for me and them too, growing up, and then learn so much from my dad. I think he’s a really good mind for the game, and a great dad as well.”

Jarome hasn’t lost any of his famed drive, either.

“I think he always made it a point not to not to let me win or kind of have an easy win because it doesn’t feel good anyway,” Tij added. “We always battle whether it’s a board game or on the ice, or whatever it is. In our house, you try to win for sure.”

While Tij admits there are advantages and opportunities that come with his surname, he’s also putting in the work.

He and his brother, Joe, had vouched hard to return to their native B.C. to pursue the WHL route after living in Boston post-Jarome’s retirement.

But as a 16-year-old playing for a powerhouse Seattle Thunderbirds team, Tij had his first real taste of adversity.

“It’s kind of the first time in my life where I was getting healthy scratched,” Iginla admitted. “I just tried to use it as fuel and motivation as much as I could…Put everything I have into it and try to have a big summer.”

That he did.

Iginla was initially tagged as a ‘B’ prospect in NHL Central Scouting’s preliminary rankings in October, projecting him as a potential second or third-round pick in the 2024 NHL Entry Draft.

Now, he’s ranked ninth among all North American skaters.

After helping the Rockets reach the postseason, Iginla didn’t just score his first WHL playoff goal, he erupted for a hat trick against the Wenatchee Wild.

The 17-year-old closed out the playoffs with nine goals and six assists for 15 points and a plus-5 rating in 11 matches.

He swiftly swapped his Rockets jersey for the maple leaf, helping Canada capture gold at the 2024 IIHF Under-18 World Championship in Finland, where he put up another 12 points (six goals, six assists) in seven games- including the championship-clinching goal.

Now, it’s just a matter of what jersey he’ll pull on next.

Roughly 20 NHL clubs took the chance to get some face time with Iginla at the 2024 NHL Combine in Buffalo, N.Y. last week.

The six-foot, 180-pound forward placed in the top 10 in four of the fitness tests (including a tie for first in VO2 max) and memorably declared if he was an animal, he’d be Pegasus, Zeus’s mythological steed.

All that’s left is to wait to hear his name called at the Sphere in Las Vegas, Nev. on June 28.

And he couldn’t be more excited.

“From an outside perspective, it might seem like there’s more pressure, kind of more expectations, things like that,” Iginla explained. “But I think for me, my motivation comes from within. I want to succeed because it’s what I want to do, and my dream.”