I HAVE been waiting for this i have his jersey since the early 2000s one of my favourite players on my team i wish we had a goalie as good as him again. It was a sad day when he retired. Mikka is a flames legend like many others i hope someday we get a legendary goalie again heres hoping
Kiprusoff is such a legend. He's bit of an enigma even here in Finland since he never gives interviews and doesn't even work in any hockey related position, but the stories some of his former teammates have told are all gold. I think this was before the 2010 Olympics the coaching staff sent the players a USB-stick or something full of information about the teams play system and whatnot and Kipper returned it to the head coach filled with german hardcore porn. Another story is that when the Flames goalie coach David Marcoux called Kiprusoff about summer training Kipper responded with something along the lines of "This summer I'm only focused on lifting raw and heavy iron, no running, no agility training. I want to be ripped when the season starts." This apparently caused a bit of a panic in the Calgary office.
I'm an Oilers fan and Kiprusoff is one of my favorite goalies all-time and he definitely deserved a Hart and another Vezina trophies with all of those 70+ game starts and still getting 35+ wins a great Sv%. Most goalies would not maintain that Sv% after starting so often. Also had one of the better masks.
While Iggy is easily my favourite Flames player, I cannot even explain how incredibly lucky we were to trade for Miikka. 2004 was such a magical year for our city and the team as a whole, the love and fandom that was built off that run is still shown today and while there were obviously many reasons the Flames made it as far as we did, we wouldn't have gone half as far if it wasn't for the goaltending of Miika Kiprusoff. People will see his somewhat short career in the NHL as maybe a knock on him but to me he's the greatest Goaltender we ever had in the Flaming C; no hate to Mike Vernon, he obviously gets love from me as well as many other past goalies but man, Kipper was the backbone of this team, and damn it if I don't love this guy forever! Seeing him in town or at the dome every once in a while is such a great thing to see!
Top 5 best goalie to never win the Stanley Cup...that man was a monster, the peak of Finnish goalies and he carried many years some average Flames teams...Kinda like Pekka Rinne really...
First jersey I ever bought and it’s still my favourite, fell in love with his play in 04 and still think about his mind bending saves 18 years later. What a goalie
Since he retired there has been only 4 times that a goalie has played at least 70 games in a season and the highest number of games played was 73. During that 7 year period when he played 70+ games each season, he actually played almost 50 more games in total than any other goalie. Just insane numbers and pretty remarkable that he doesn't seem to have missed almost any games due to injuries, especially since he played the butterfly stance unlike Brodeur who churned out 70+ game seasons like it was nothing.
Love videos on good players from the 99-08 era. Being 28 and having played well over 2000 hours of NHL 2004 alone I get a massive nostalgia bomb anytime i get to remember players I drafted multiple times in Franchise mode.
I agree, im 26. An the hockey games growing up compared to now, I feel spoiled I got enjoy those games growing up. Now if only the league returned to the jerseys of the 2000s ;)
THANK YOU! I feel like I'm getting older because Kiprusoff and Nabokov were a few of the best goalies in the game when I first started following hockey and now the Flames and Sharks are still looking for that stalwart... I'd like to nominate Evgeni Nabokov for induction into the THG Hall of Fame.
As a Flames fan the only reason why I loved playing goalie in hockey on the street or on the ice was Kipper. My favourite goalie of all time some of those saves he made very crazy.
Miikka Kiprusoff was early on a major tallent, but both in Finland and in early NHL days they did not fully believed in him. His professional breakthrough came with Swedish Elitserien and AIK. They had seen him play and was impressed and recruited him. Despite being on a weak team, he was recognized as one of the best goalkeepers in the league. And 2 years later he was desired in Finland and he near led his TPS to win the Finnsh league SM-liiga championship! Still, Kiprusoff gives the credit to Swedish AIK that they where the first professional team that believed in him and he would have played for them in the 2005 lock-out season if they where not in the Division 1 grade - so he played for Swedish Timra IK where a lot of Finnsih born tallent was playing at the time. Regardless, he had a great NHL career and truly was one of the best in the league for several seasons.
We made so many damn trades to impact our lines, to get that additional player to help Iggy but it just never materialized; while 2004 was an epic story and great run for the city and fandom as a whole in our City, going that far made our management think that we were a lot closer than what we actually were.
Kipper was amazing goalie with very special qualities. Look at how he was stretching like no other between goalposts and those hands which didn't give much rebound opportunities from even shots under top bar of the goal. Of course seven seasons over seventy games was taxing goalie like hell but still 41 shutouts and continuosly winning more than loosing. A goalie who made the whole team better. My opinion is that he is going to be a future hall of famer.
Worth mentioning Daryl sutter coached the sharks while miikka was there and when the flames needed a new man between the pipes ... he knew the perfect fella
thank you for making this! kiprusoff is one of my all time favorite players. also the puck totally crossed the line in game 6. that is the hockey hill im willing to die on.
One if the coolest goalie masks in all of hockey imo ! Great video Shannon, been watching for a while now and the content keeps getting better and better
...they wouldn't have made the playoffs any of those seasons. Calgary was always on the fringe with the exception of 2006 when they were a third seed. So, not sure what the point of that was.
I loved Mikka. He and Iggy were the only reasons this team wasn't Arizona bad during that 7 year stretch. I still can picture the video of those scorpion saves. An outstanding goalie who never quit on a puck.
One of my dad’s favorite goalies in my (31yr) lifetime. My dad asked Ken Holland why he didn’t draft Miikka and he said they were going to take him with their next pick but he was scooped up. Could have been great on the Wings during the later cup year.
Folk hero in Calgary forever. Hes up there for us fans with iggy and lanny. Back then it just killed us to watch him get played to death with no breaks. Shoulda had a much longer career.
I recall Luongo talking about how it’s not really possible for goalies of today to play 70+ games like the guys back 10-15 years ago. Too much pressure on the knees and hips with all the lateral movement and increase in skill
Kipper was definitely vastly overplayed in Calgary! 7 70+ game seasons in a row is nuts! If he had been allowed to rest more and play like 60-65 games per season his career might have been longer and the Flames probably would have had better chances in the playoffs with more fresh Kipper...
While I agree the amount of games he played during the season was nuts, he was never the reason we lost in the playoffs, we always could trust that he was going to be great in net, it was the lack of offence, Iggy was up leading the team on the ice with people that while they were great and had potential never could really be another catalyst to a great playoff run.
Thank you so much for doing this video Shan. Miikka was my hero growing up. I absolutely loved him in Calgary and am so grateful to have gotten to witness him play.
I grew up a leafs fan so potvin was my first move , and as I got older I cared less about the team and loved goalies in general and kipper was my go to #1 when he played for the flames
Great goalie, huge coming out of the lockout. I felt this guy was around forever, I saw on hockeycards as early as 94 and he was a big deal in Sweden, Finland in the late 90's. Though it didn't feel like he could become a NHL starter until he got to Cgy.
Can Nabby be next goalie career video? Nabokov is favorite goalie and as iconic as jumbo for the time there. I remember staying up late watching that overtime game against the stars, and that glove save is still something else
Somewhere Pavel Bure has indigestion. You, fine sir ,resplendent in red... flames red well you are tremendous. A true fan of hockey. A van fan, me being fumes fan. I tip my hat to you.
I think you're underselling him. Kipper's resume is very comparable to other great Finnish tenders Rask and Rinne. All three won the Vezina once, were 1st team all stars and took their clubs to the Cup finals. Miikka has the best international resume of the three. He was top 5 in wins 6 times; Rinne only 4 times and Rask just once. The difference is that Nashville and Boston had better defences than Calgary did during Miikka's time. The Flames lived and died by this guy for nearly a decade.
Rhett Warner, Toni Lydman, Robyn Regehr and Andrew Ference. Yeah, what an awful defense. They didn't score much but they were amazing defensively. And one of the best defensive coaches in Sutter for most of his prime years. Pretty dumb comment, wouldn't give you many marks for hockey history.
Ohh, the '04 Flames were solid, don't hear me saying they were a bunch of scrubs, but I'd take Josi, Subban, Ellis and Ekholm or Chara, McAvoy and Krug over Regehr, Leopold and crew. And I wasn't just refering to the Cup runs; Kipper never had a Hall of Fame or Norris caliber defenseman in front of him in Calgary. Nashville had Webber, Josi and Subban at different times while Boston had Chara. The point is that Kiprusoff had a lot of heavy lifting to do and often gets over looked or underrated.
Part of my Mount Rushmore of childhood goalies along with Olaf Kolzig, Chris Osgood, and Rick DiPietro (who I will defend was a good goalie who got hurt and just had an awful contract)
@@ScaryRevenant Not really. It's a solid list. If we assume DiPietro had a healthy career and assume he was on the Isles for 10+ years he would've tallied over 300 NHL wins easily.
If not already done, could you do a career video on Mike Richter some time? Would be curious about your assessment on him since he‘s kind of a legend and somewhat mediocre in stats at the same time.
He probably would have put up better overall numbers if he hadn't been used so heavily. But when you look at who his backups were, it's hard to blame his coaches. For basically an entire decade Flames' coaches didn't see much difference between starting their backup goalie and just forfeiting the game because each and every backup the Flames tried was some variation of terrible. Not sure what the GMs were doing, but they couldn't find one decent backup for Kipper over the space of a decade.
Imo Miikka was a HOF talent but the team he played on didn't match his level of play. Even on nights where he let in 5, he'd be the best player on the ice. As a flame fan it's so depressing how they couldn't get him or Iggy a cup.
I think if he played 50games regular season and not 70games per season in calgary and i think he might have had couple more years in him at the NHL level
I HAVE been waiting for this i have his jersey since the early 2000s one of my favourite players on my team i wish we had a goalie as good as him again. It was a sad day when he retired. Mikka is a flames legend like many others i hope someday we get a legendary goalie again heres hoping
Maybe markstrom will be
@@jordanwolfcastle7387 With his playoff performance this year thats doubtful.
He was a joy to watch. It was jarring the day we were watching the next goaltender in line. It was a massive drop off.
Kiprusoff is such a legend. He's bit of an enigma even here in Finland since he never gives interviews and doesn't even work in any hockey related position, but the stories some of his former teammates have told are all gold.
I think this was before the 2010 Olympics the coaching staff sent the players a USB-stick or something full of information about the teams play system and whatnot and Kipper returned it to the head coach filled with german hardcore porn.
Another story is that when the Flames goalie coach David Marcoux called Kiprusoff about summer training Kipper responded with something along the lines of "This summer I'm only focused on lifting raw and heavy iron, no running, no agility training. I want to be ripped when the season starts." This apparently caused a bit of a panic in the Calgary office.
Lol I never heard that story but it’s hilarious
I'm an Oilers fan and Kiprusoff is one of my favorite goalies all-time and he definitely deserved a Hart and another Vezina trophies with all of those 70+ game starts and still getting 35+ wins a great Sv%. Most goalies would not maintain that Sv% after starting so often. Also had one of the better masks.
While Iggy is easily my favourite Flames player, I cannot even explain how incredibly lucky we were to trade for Miikka. 2004 was such a magical year for our city and the team as a whole, the love and fandom that was built off that run is still shown today and while there were obviously many reasons the Flames made it as far as we did, we wouldn't have gone half as far if it wasn't for the goaltending of Miika Kiprusoff. People will see his somewhat short career in the NHL as maybe a knock on him but to me he's the greatest Goaltender we ever had in the Flaming C; no hate to Mike Vernon, he obviously gets love from me as well as many other past goalies but man, Kipper was the backbone of this team, and damn it if I don't love this guy forever! Seeing him in town or at the dome every once in a while is such a great thing to see!
Top 5 best goalie to never win the Stanley Cup...that man was a monster, the peak of Finnish goalies and he carried many years some average Flames teams...Kinda like Pekka Rinne really...
Hes a true legend here in Calgary, we love him and never forget about him. Jersey retirement coming soon
Absolutely man, he's one of our fav's, him and Iggy are and will be legends forever in the YYC.
First jersey I ever bought and it’s still my favourite, fell in love with his play in 04 and still think about his mind bending saves 18 years later. What a goalie
Mikka was my favorite player growing up, so it’s cool to see this.
He was the goalie that made me like the Montreal brand goalie sticks.
Since he retired there has been only 4 times that a goalie has played at least 70 games in a season and the highest number of games played was 73. During that 7 year period when he played 70+ games each season, he actually played almost 50 more games in total than any other goalie. Just insane numbers and pretty remarkable that he doesn't seem to have missed almost any games due to injuries, especially since he played the butterfly stance unlike Brodeur who churned out 70+ game seasons like it was nothing.
Love videos on good players from the 99-08 era. Being 28 and having played well over 2000 hours of NHL 2004 alone I get a massive nostalgia bomb anytime i get to remember players I drafted multiple times in Franchise mode.
That intro to 06... man what a time
I agree, im 26. An the hockey games growing up compared to now, I feel spoiled I got enjoy those games growing up. Now if only the league returned to the jerseys of the 2000s ;)
THANK YOU! I feel like I'm getting older because Kiprusoff and Nabokov were a few of the best goalies in the game when I first started following hockey and now the Flames and Sharks are still looking for that stalwart... I'd like to nominate Evgeni Nabokov for induction into the THG Hall of Fame.
Warren Strelow
As an Oilers fan. Kipper was always one of those players from the Flames I always enjoyed watching
Yooo! Kiprusoff was one of my favorite non-Penguin goalies growing up. Went to get him in NHL 08 a lot
Amazing goalie, one of the pioneers of amazing Finnish goaltending, tho there were some good ones ahead of him too.
I remember seeing Miikka in "my" team here in Sweden (AIK), and boy he was good!
I remember watching kipper and Iggy when I was 4 and 5 years old. Those were the days that turned me into a Flames fan
When we look back at the growth of Shannons youtube career these videos will be here forever hopefully.
my childhood idol, thanks for all the hard work Shannon ! Its really appreciated, it brings back some good memories !
literally 👏🏼
wtf i literally just searched for this few days ago and now you make a video about kiprusoff's career :D
As a Flames fan the only reason why I loved playing goalie in hockey on the street or on the ice was Kipper. My favourite goalie of all time some of those saves he made very crazy.
Miikka Kiprusoff was early on a major tallent, but both in Finland and in early NHL days they did not fully believed in him.
His professional breakthrough came with Swedish Elitserien and AIK. They had seen him play and was impressed and recruited him. Despite being on a weak team, he was recognized as one of the best goalkeepers in the league. And 2 years later he was desired in Finland and he near led his TPS to win the Finnsh league SM-liiga championship!
Still, Kiprusoff gives the credit to Swedish AIK that they where the first professional team that believed in him and he would have played for them in the 2005 lock-out season if they where not in the Division 1 grade - so he played for Swedish Timra IK where a lot of Finnsih born tallent was playing at the time.
Regardless, he had a great NHL career and truly was one of the best in the league for several seasons.
Miikka won Sm-Liiga championship at year 95 and 98. And was the best goalie of The league at 98. ( MVP)
@@olaviliikanen69 Yeah true! but he is still crediting AIK for giving him his breakthrough he felt he was denied in Finland.
@@WarioSaysSo Denied? Maybe after 2001 World Championships where he didn't play that good..
He has some crazy highlights, loved Miikka growing up.
I bought a Kipper jersey last year from coolhockey and it is my favorite!
Oh Kipper...my favorite player along with Nabokov and Hasek. The Flames really dropped the ball with him and Iginla after 2004.
We made so many damn trades to impact our lines, to get that additional player to help Iggy but it just never materialized; while 2004 was an epic story and great run for the city and fandom as a whole in our City, going that far made our management think that we were a lot closer than what we actually were.
Kipper was amazing goalie with very special qualities. Look at how he was stretching like no other between goalposts and those hands which didn't give much rebound opportunities from even shots under top bar of the goal. Of course seven seasons over seventy games was taxing goalie like hell but still 41 shutouts and continuosly winning more than loosing. A goalie who made the whole team better. My opinion is that he is going to be a future hall of famer.
Best goalie not in the HHOF. Watched him lots in person and on TV - fantastic goalie.
Worth mentioning Daryl sutter coached the sharks while miikka was there and when the flames needed a new man between the pipes ... he knew the perfect fella
thank you for making this! kiprusoff is one of my all time favorite players. also the puck totally crossed the line in game 6. that is the hockey hill im willing to die on.
Great goaltender. Flames fans such as myself will forever appreciate all Kipper did for us.
One if the coolest goalie masks in all of hockey imo ! Great video Shannon, been watching for a while now and the content keeps getting better and better
Awesome goalie. Imagine if they only played him 60-65 games per year.
...they wouldn't have made the playoffs any of those seasons. Calgary was always on the fringe with the exception of 2006 when they were a third seed. So, not sure what the point of that was.
And 08-09 when they lost the division playing with 15 guys
The goat!!! The only reason I started playing goal.
I loved Mikka. He and Iggy were the only reasons this team wasn't Arizona bad during that 7 year stretch. I still can picture the video of those scorpion saves. An outstanding goalie who never quit on a puck.
At his peak one of the best goalies of all time. Maybe top five.
Was waiting for this by far my favorite all-time goalie
My favorite goalie of all time
Kiper was a nightmare for Vancouver to play against back in those WCE era days. Loved his goalie mask as a kid.
I was at the game he made a surprise appearance against Vancouver, it was so cool seeing him again after so long
He was one of my favorite goalies when I was growing up, one of the first goalies I learned the name of as a kid.
As a Sharks fan, that 2004 WCF really stung 😖
have his jersey hanging in my living room-'goalie hall of fame' awesome guy...
Miiiikkkkkkkaaaaaa Kipprusoffffff!!!! No one can forget that 2004 run. And that steal of a trade from Sharks. To bad we did not win.
Kipper was one of the reasons I became a flame fan back then. Flames need to retire his jersey asap
One of my dad’s favorite goalies in my (31yr) lifetime. My dad asked Ken Holland why he didn’t draft Miikka and he said they were going to take him with their next pick but he was scooped up. Could have been great on the Wings during the later cup year.
If the Flames drafted him... My god. Haha
Folk hero in Calgary forever. Hes up there for us fans with iggy and lanny. Back then it just killed us to watch him get played to death with no breaks. Shoulda had a much longer career.
My favorite goalie as a kid 🙏
His career highlights are unreal
I recall Luongo talking about how it’s not really possible for goalies of today to play 70+ games like the guys back 10-15 years ago.
Too much pressure on the knees and hips with all the lateral movement and increase in skill
my hero growing up🔥
Kipper was definitely vastly overplayed in Calgary! 7 70+ game seasons in a row is nuts! If he had been allowed to rest more and play like 60-65 games per season his career might have been longer and the Flames probably would have had better chances in the playoffs with more fresh Kipper...
While I agree the amount of games he played during the season was nuts, he was never the reason we lost in the playoffs, we always could trust that he was going to be great in net, it was the lack of offence, Iggy was up leading the team on the ice with people that while they were great and had potential never could really be another catalyst to a great playoff run.
Tell that to Martin Brodeur.
@@sportscastercanada what does Martin Brodeur have to do with this?
Yay Kipper! I'd love a career vid on Nabby as well!
Amazing goalie, underrated
When Vancouver would play Calgary during Kippers peak I would always be so demoralized. He was unreal
My favorite player, just got his jersey last year.
Thank you so much for doing this video Shan. Miikka was my hero growing up. I absolutely loved him in Calgary and am so grateful to have gotten to witness him play.
He really was a workhorse.
I grew up a leafs fan so potvin was my first move , and as I got older I cared less about the team and loved goalies in general and kipper was my go to #1 when he played for the flames
Still my all-time favorite hockey name
My favourite goalie, maybe my favourite player of all time.
My fav, so underrated.
Great goalie, huge coming out of the lockout. I felt this guy was around forever, I saw on hockeycards as early as 94 and he was a big deal in Sweden, Finland in the late 90's. Though it didn't feel like he could become a NHL starter until he got to Cgy.
One of the greats !
amazing goalie
Fav non-Canucks goalie as a kid!!
Can Nabby be next goalie career video? Nabokov is favorite goalie and as iconic as jumbo for the time there.
I remember staying up late watching that overtime game against the stars, and that glove save is still something else
I love these bc I always learn something. I thought Kipper was w the Flames his whole career
As much as I love Markstrom, and happy to finally have a true #1 goalie, I truly miss Kipper. The Flames need to retire his jersey already
One of the best.
Seeing Roman Turek's name on that board would be another fun goalie Career video
I asked for this a few days ago.
Kipper ❤️
Somewhere Pavel Bure has indigestion. You, fine sir ,resplendent in red... flames red well you are tremendous. A true fan of hockey. A van fan, me being fumes fan. I tip my hat to you.
As a Finn, Kipper is my 2nd favourite Finnish goalie of all time after Rinne.
Could you do a Lanny Mcdonald video in the future? That moustache is absolutely incredible
I use to love how he would have his goalie mask lifted in between whistles.
Looks like he’s getting his jersey retired now!
With those amounts of games played, his save% is kinda amazing.
Imagine him playing 65ish games per season.
Any plans to look at Jonas hiller? Feel like his career was wild
I think you're underselling him. Kipper's resume is very comparable to other great Finnish tenders Rask and Rinne. All three won the Vezina once, were 1st team all stars and took their clubs to the Cup finals. Miikka has the best international resume of the three. He was top 5 in wins 6 times; Rinne only 4 times and Rask just once. The difference is that Nashville and Boston had better defences than Calgary did during Miikka's time. The Flames lived and died by this guy for nearly a decade.
Rhett Warner, Toni Lydman, Robyn Regehr and Andrew Ference. Yeah, what an awful defense. They didn't score much but they were amazing defensively. And one of the best defensive coaches in Sutter for most of his prime years. Pretty dumb comment, wouldn't give you many marks for hockey history.
Ohh, the '04 Flames were solid, don't hear me saying they were a bunch of scrubs, but I'd take Josi, Subban, Ellis and Ekholm or Chara, McAvoy and Krug over Regehr, Leopold and crew. And I wasn't just refering to the Cup runs; Kipper never had a Hall of Fame or Norris caliber defenseman in front of him in Calgary. Nashville had Webber, Josi and Subban at different times while Boston had Chara. The point is that Kiprusoff had a lot of heavy lifting to do and often gets over looked or underrated.
Part of my Mount Rushmore of childhood goalies along with Olaf Kolzig, Chris Osgood, and Rick DiPietro (who I will defend was a good goalie who got hurt and just had an awful contract)
What a crappy Mount Rushmore 😂
@@ScaryRevenant Not really. It's a solid list. If we assume DiPietro had a healthy career and assume he was on the Isles for 10+ years he would've tallied over 300 NHL wins easily.
@@stoddard1953 you know what happens when you assume something right
If not already done, could you do a career video on Mike Richter some time? Would be curious about your assessment on him since he‘s kind of a legend and somewhat mediocre in stats at the same time.
Darryl definitely over worked him. It would have been nice to see how good he could have been if he had been given more of a break.
Flames GOTTA retire #34. They just GOTTA.
Do one of these on Anson Carter
He probably would have put up better overall numbers if he hadn't been used so heavily. But when you look at who his backups were, it's hard to blame his coaches. For basically an entire decade Flames' coaches didn't see much difference between starting their backup goalie and just forfeiting the game because each and every backup the Flames tried was some variation of terrible. Not sure what the GMs were doing, but they couldn't find one decent backup for Kipper over the space of a decade.
Vesa Toskala. Haven't heard that name in years.
I hated Kipper so much, only because he was a Canuck killer lol. Great goalie.
Imo Miikka was a HOF talent but the team he played on didn't match his level of play. Even on nights where he let in 5, he'd be the best player on the ice.
As a flame fan it's so depressing how they couldn't get him or Iggy a cup.
He was a great goalie in front of a mediocre Flames team . If he had a better team in front of him and more rest he would have had much better stats .
Best player not in the hall. I couldnt imagine him on tampa instead of vasi. I think tampa is winning 8+ chips in a row.
🐐
OMG YES!!!
I think if he played 50games regular season and not 70games per season in calgary and i think he might have had couple more years in him at the NHL level
KIPPY!
I always thought that if the Sharks had kept him, they could’ve won a cup.
Forgot he wasn’t drafted by the flames
Kipper!!
What about Vesa Toskala?
KIPPER !
Cool guy, weird one. Smoled a LOT pd cigarettes
Police Department cigarettes?