The 2016-17 Colorado Avalanche team did not have a good year. In fact, statistically, that Avs team had the sixteenth-worst season in NHL history. They finished the year with 48 points after going 22-56-4. Only the 2023-24 San Jose Sharks (with a record of 19-54-9, "good" enough for 47 points) have had a worse season in the salary cap era.
It was a campaign littered with misfortune and misadventure; accordingly, there have been plenty of breakdowns, deep-dives, and — with the meteoric rise the Avs had from worst-to-best in 2022 — retrospectives on that forgettable season. There's one specific moment that speaks to the general vibes of that season, one that isn't often talked about: the fight between Jarome Iginla and Cody McLeod, which took place just a single day after the latter player was traded to the division-rival Nashville Predators.
This article will provide some context for the build-up to and the fallout from the tilt between McLeod and Iginla. It's impossible to separate this singular, micro moment from the larger, macro setting of the season at a whole, so the aim is to provide a narrative of the moment within the environment that was the 2016-17 season.
Was this fight indicative of poor locker room chemistry and the tensions that arose from playing so poorly across the 82-game season, or was it merely a part of the game in 2017, a warrior recognizing another warrior in need of establishing himself amidst his new team? Iginla had very little left to prove, apart from his value for a contending team as the 2017 trade deadline approached. McLeod, whose role in the NHL was already getting phased out, had everything to prove to a Nashville team that would play for the Stanley Cup at season's end. It's a singular moment in hockey history: it's one so rare, forgettable, and impactful that it deserves contextualization and a little love nearly a decade later.
1. December 13, 2009
The aforementioned fight in the 2016-17 season wasn't the first time these two players dropped the mitts. At the 17:08 mark of the first period in a game on December 13, 2009, McLeod and Iginla fought just to the left of Calgary's net. It was a spirited bout, with each player landing a few shots before they both tumbled to the ice.
Iginla was no stranger to facing off against the Avs; all but two of his 16 seasons as a Calgary Flame were spent in the same division as Colorado (before the teams were separated when the league realigned its divisions before the 2013-14 season).
Out of every team he played against in his career, Iginla recorded the third-most penalties against the Colorado Avalanche with 81 PIMs. Only against the Canucks (93) and the Oilers (97) — two western Canadian rivals — did he record more during his 20-year hall-of-fame career.
2. July 1, 2014
Jarome Iginla signed a three-year, $16 million deal with the Colorado Avalanche. He had spent the prior season with the Boston Bruins and the season prior to that with the Pittsburgh Penguins. This came after 16 seasons with the Calgary Flames.
Iginla was brought in as a veteran piece who still had plenty of offense to contribute; in his 225 games with Colorado, he recorded 59 goals, 65 assists, and 124 points. Apart from the offensive output, he also served as a mentor to young players like Gabriel Landeskog, Nathan MacKinnon, and Mikko Rantanen.
3. October 15, 2016
The Avalanche kicked off the 2016-17 campaign with a win against the Stars at American Airlines Center in Dallas, TX. They won their next game, on October 17, against the Pittsburgh Penguins at the then-recently-renamed PPG Paints Arena; they would never win more than two consecutive games throughout the entire season.
The Avs had provided much excitement to kick of this season: they went undefeated in six pre-season games, allowing just six goals across those 360 minutes of play. While a win over Dallas — a team with genuine post-season aspirations that year — was nice, it was their second win to open the year, played against the previous season's Stanley Cup winning Penguins, that really raised eyebrows in the context of their pre-season success.
4. January 5, 2017
Less than two weeks before his tilt with McLeod, Iginla got into a scrap with another former teammate: Calgary's star defenseman Mark Giordano. While the two didn't end up actually fighting, both players had dropped the gloves and were rearing to go until the refs had to break it up. It was a moment that both players reflected on after the game, with Giordano joking that he "just wanted to see if [Iginla] was still tops in the fitness testing" and making sure the media knew there were no hard feelings.
Iginla had also previously dropped the gloves with his former Calgary teammate Dion Phaneuf early into the 2014 season, but the refs separated them before any punches were thrown in that one, too. Unlike the scrum with Giordano, however, there were no jokes or well-intentioned jabs delivered post-game, hinting at a less-than-friendly vibe on the ice, as well.
5. January 12, 2017
The Avalanche lost to the Anaheim Ducks by a score of 4-1 at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado. This kicked off what would become a season-worst nine-game losing streak.
Additionally, throughout the season, the Avs would also have a seven-game, a six-game, 3 five-game, and one four-game losing streaks. The most wins they accrued consecutively at any point in the 2016-17 season was, as indicated earlier, only two games.
6. January 13, 2017
The Avalanche traded McLeod to the Nashville Predators for Felix Girard. McLeod, who until then had been a career-Av, was a fan-favorite enforcer who played in 659 games in the burgundy and blue. He recorded 117 points and 1,359PIM in that time. As the league, and the sport as a whole, has shifted away from the days of the enforcers, McLeod was the last of his kind to ever dress for the Avs.
Girard spent the rest of the 2016-17 season and the entirety of the following season with the Avalanche's then-affiliate AHL team, the San Antonio Rampage. He spent a bit more time in the AHL — never able to crack an NHL lineup — and has played overseas in the years since.
7. January 14, 2017 --- Before the Fight
https://t.co/kW5DgRhhTo via @imgur
— Andrew S @ Mile High Sticking (@ajs_MHS) July 24, 2025
McLeod and Iginla, two players familiar with fighting and its role in the NHL at the time, were seen smiling as they line up next to each other for a faceoff early into the game. This single image is perhaps the most obvious example of the lack of any personal animosity before the fight. Quotes delivered after the game, by both players, support that this fight wasn't personal. More on those in a bit.
8. January 14, 2017 --- 02:28 2nd Period
McLeod and Iginla dropped the gloves early into the second period. The fight occurred immediately after the puck was dropped in the Nashville end of the ice. The two had been teammates just 15 hours earlier, making this one of the quickest turnarounds from teammates to combatants in NHL history.
Iginla landed the first jab, but both players landed a dozen-or-so good hits before Iginla lost his balance and fell to the ice, taking McLeod down with him. McLeod, even with his new team, gave the Avs fans one last show.
9. January 14, 2017 --- 07:52 2nd Period
In what some have identified as McLeod's "legacy game," he also went on to score in the shift immediately preceding his five-minute fighting major. Nashville didn't acquire the scrappy, bent-nosed left-winger for his offensive capabilities, but he rewarded them with a tally — the first of what would be three straight goals for the Preds — as Nashville went on to win 3-2.
In this very game, he played the third-lease minutes of any Predators player, logging just a little over 10 minutes. Perhaps, liberated for the first time from the burden of wearing the burgundy and blue that season, McLeod felt inspired to truly take advantage of his limited usage and to show the home Avs crowd — and the front office in Denver — what they had given up. It was another embarrassment for the Colorado Avalanche in a long string of such moments that marked the 2016-17 season as laughably unfortunate.
10. Janury 14, 2017 --- Post-Game
Both players addressed the media and discussed the fight:
McLeod: "I thought we could use a spark right then and I asked him (Iginla), and he's a tough guy... No hard feelings, we both play hard. I love Iggy, we're good friends, but on the ice it's all business."
Iginla: "I don't know if he was joking or serious, but he asked me off the draw if I'd give him one. I've heard him give that line to many other guys many times. I said, 'Sure.' I know it's not personal with him, I really enjoyed playing with him."
Could there be underlying hard feelings? Absolutely. Were these two players merely doing their jobs and providing a spark for their respective teams, likely without any personal animosity? Presumably, yes. It's fun to imagine that there's a darker, more hatred-driven narrative to be spun here, but it appears to be untrue.
11. March 1, 2017
Just a few months after McLeod was dealt to Nashville, Iginla would also be traded; the then-39-year-old was sent to the Los Angeles Kings in exchange for a conditional 4th round pick in the 2018 NHL Entry Draft. The conditions for this pick — A) the Kings win the Stanley cup that same season or B) Iginla re-signs with the Kings the following season — were not met, so the Avs did not retain the pick in question.
Iginla dressed in 19 games for the Kings, in which he registered 9 points, before calling it a career at the end of the 2016-17 season. Throughout his illustrious career, which included 1,554 games, 625 goals, 675 assists, 1,300 points, and 1,040 penalty minutes — alongside 81 games, 37goals, 31 assists, and 68 points in the playoffs — Iginla accrued 72 fighting majors. He was voted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2020, his first year of eligibility. He accomplished much in his career, which included numerous opportunities to dress for Canada, his home country, on the world stage, but he never won a Stanley Cup.
12. March 11, 2017
With a 4-2 loss at home against the Ottawa Senators, the Avs were officially eliminated from playoff contention for the 2016-17 season. They had 15 games remaining in the season, making this disqualification from postseason hockey one of the earliest in NHL history.
In their remaining 15 games after elimination, the Avs registered three wins against 11 losses and a single shootout loss. From their game on March 18, 2017, played at Joe Louis Arena against the Detroit Red Wings through March 29, 2017, played at home against the Washington Capitals, the Avs lost seven consecutive games.
13. April 9, 2017
The Avs' season — after a 3-2 loss at the hands of the St. Louis Blues at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, MO — officially, mercifully comes to an end. This season was the third-worst in franchise history, with the other two occurring before the relocation from Quebec to Colorado. In the 1990-91 season, the Nordiques finished 16-50-14 with 46 points; in the 1989-90 season, the Nordiques finished 12-61-7 with 31 points.
While "Trader Joe" Sakic and the Avs' front office were about to embark on their phoenix-like restoration into a contending team within just a few years, this 2016-17 season was rock-bottom for the Avalanche.
Verdict
While there was almost certainly ample, precursor stress and tension that contributed in a number of ways (including the trade of Cody McLeod in the first place), the bout between McLeod and Iginla was seemingly just an instance of a veteran player, Iginla, helping a former teammate, McLeod, get acclimated to his new team — all while putting on a show for the home crowd in Denver: a fanbase desperately in need of something to cheer for during the worst season in the history of the Colorado Avalanche.
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