When Mike Keenan arrived in St. Louis, he and Blues superstar winger Brett Hull did not exactly see eye-to-eye. The relationship was always chilled and it helped rob Blues’ fans of Hull’s final years.
Hull got the last laugh when he won a pair of Stanley Cups. Keenan has been hired and fired by several teams in the meantime with the Calgary Flames being the latest to gamble on him.
Jarome Iginla fans feared that Keenan would soon run the Flames’ star out of town, but their relationship has not been strained.
Iginla, one of the world’s best players of color, leads the Flames in scoring with 61 points and was voted to the NHL all-star game as a starter by fans. More importantly, the Flames are seventh in the competitive Western Conference.
“His preparation has been noteworthy. His performance has been noteworthy. He has had an impact on the whole group,” Keenan told the Flames’ website.
“You always could see the players from a distance and the good ones stand out, but I had no contact with Jarome at all before I arrived in Calgary. The attributes that all the great leaders I have been able to coach have that quality, that they come in every day and they’re very successful.”
Iginla’s 61 points are fourth in the National Hockey League. He has netted 32 goals with 29 assists.
He is +18 during his ice time, ranking him among the league leaders. What this index basically means is that you’re on the ice when your team scores goals, you’re off the ice when bad things happen and you don’t take a lot of foolish penalties that lead to power play goals against you.
“I think a big part of this is that this is the most talented group I have played with. We’ve all been helping each other, really,” Iginla said.
“When you are feeling good you try things and you see things and things just happen, but you are not really thinking…”
St. Louis should learn lesson
Terrell Rogers was known throughout San Francisco as one of its most vocal anti-violence activists.
He was also just as spirited when it came to cheering on his daughter, Tierra, as she played for Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep, the nation’s top-ranked girls high school basketball game.
Last Saturday, the Ellis Street gym was jammed to the rafters for the showdown between Sacred Heart and Archbishop Mitty High School of San Jose.
Rogers was known for stepping outside at halftime of Tierra’s games for a cigarette break. According to police, two assailants knew that too. They approached Rogers and gunned him down in cold blood, literally yards from the locker room where his daughter prepared for the second half.
“It appears people were out there waiting for him,” police homicide Lt. John Murphy told the San Francisco Chronicle.
“They didn’t even rob him – it had to be a personal beef.”
Rogers was co-founder of the nonprofit Peacekeepers group in the Alice Griffith public housing development in San Francisco, where he grew up. The non-profit intervention group works to curb violence, and while Rogers no longer lived in the development, he kept an office in an apartment with the word “peace” on its window.
He decried the number of guns in African-American neighborhoods and worked with police to reduce violent crime.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome said he is “saddened” and there is a citywide manhunt on to find Rogers’ killers.
The entire city is also involved in reducing the number of murders in San Francisco, with Newsome vowing to do whatever it takes to halt his city’s homicide increase.
St. Louis Mayor Francis G. Slay and Police Chief Joe Mokwa praised each other for “reducing crime” while the murder rate continues to soar.
San Francisco had 98 homicides in 2007 with the majority happening in one neighborhood. Half of the city’s murder victims were black men. Gavin and his city are alarmed to action with less than 100 murders in a population of 745,000.
St. Louis population is about 345,000 – less than half of San Francisco’s. Yet there were 138 murders in the city in 2007 compared to 129 in 2006
Most of the killings happen on the city’s North Side, and a conservative estimate is that more than 80 percent are black men.
San Francisco is taking action. The mayor and police chief are taking photos. Look for San Francisco’s murder rate to drop in 2008. Look for more death on the streets of St. Louis
