From start to finish — from first taste to last gasp — he had his say.

On the ice.

And, crucially, off of it.

Jarome Iginla’s fingerprints were all over the Calgary Flames’ wild run to the 2004 Stanley Cup final. If you could turn on your television set, you could see No. 12.

Skating. Shooting. Scrapping.

Behind the scenes, there had been even more to the first-year captain’s contributions.

Iginla was there when the Flames needed him most. Like at a critical juncture of the opening-round matchup — that pivotal night in Vancouver when they slammed into an emotional wall.

The young team had just surrendered the equalizer in the dying seconds of Game 7?

Now what?

“It’s vivid in my mind,” starts Martin Gelinas. “Jarome came into the room. Guys have their heads down. We feel like we’ve just lost. And he stood up and said, ‘If someone would have said that we’d be in Game 7 — in overtime, in Vancouver — when we started this series, we would have been thrilled. Let’s go out there and do it.’ The mood changed. Everything perked up. We went out there and ended up winning the game.”

Gelinas says, when the topic of the 2004 playoffs comes up, he most often fields queries about his non-goal in Game 6 against Tampa.

“But what I always talk about is Game 7 in Vancouver,” he says. “The team was not expected to move on. And the leader, the captain, took charge in the room and realized that something needed to be said. And he said it. And from that point on, the focus, the way we approached the games, was totally different.

“That’s the story that I’ll remember.”

Weeks later, in different circumstances — dead, not just dire — Iginla again addressed his peers in the dressing room. Bear in mind that his disappointment after losing Game 7 in Tampa would have been no less deep than anyone else’s.

But he stood up.

He said the right things, this time while Bolts fans, in the stands, were screaming as their heroes took turns hoisting the Stanley Cup.

“I remember Jarome saying, ‘Just listen to them out there cheering. Just remember that one day we’re going to come back — and it’ll be us in our home rink,’ “ says Shean Donovan. “The way hockey is, for most of us it didn’t happen again.”

Nor has it happened for Iginla.

But it had not been for a lack of trying during those memorable two months.

Iginla led the league with 13 goals. With 22 points, he stood third. Among the top-30 point-getters, only Ville Nieminen took more penalty minutes than the Flames captain, who battered his way to 45.

He averaged 23:18 of ice time. It only seemed like he was out there all the time.

At that point — 26 years of age, six foot one, 212 pounds — Iginla was the best player on the planet.

Never better, before or since.

“To me, that’s the real Jarome Iginla,” says Rhett Warrener. “At the end, especially here (with the Flames), he could still score goals and was still a good player . . . but that intensity, that desire, that passion that he played with (in 2004), inspired guys. Putting it into words is hard.