Flames take 2-1 edge with shutout

CALGARY, Alberta — It’s tough to say who has had it worse all these years. Has it been the Calgary Flames, who have not won a Stanley Cup since 1989?

Or is it Canada as a whole, which had not hosted a Cup final on native soil in nine years and 353 days?

This much is certain. Saturday night’s 3-0 Flames victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 3 of the Cup Finals probably eases the pain for folks from Ontario all the way to Alberta.

The Flames finally got a power-play goal. They added another off the rush, and Jarome Iginla scored in the third period to give them a two-games-to-one lead in the best-of-7 series. Teams that win Game 3 have gone on to take the Cup in 47 of 65 seasons (72.3 percent).

The more applicable statistic, however, is that teams that have won Game 3 when the series was tied at 1-1 have gone on to win the Cup in 21 of the last 24 seasons (87.5 percent).

Pretty hockey it wasn’t Saturday night. It was nasty and physical, and was highlighted by a fight involving two of the top players in the series: Iginla and Tampa Bay’s Vincent Lecavalier.

Scoring first has been such a “momentum thing” in the playoffs, and it took until 13 minutes, 53 seconds of the second period before someone got a goal in this game.

“The bottom line is, in the National Hockey League, it’s hard to score, and teams are so in tune with their game plan and their system,” Calgary coach Darryl Sutter said. “Protecting a lead is a hell of a lot easier than trying to come from behind. I mean, it’s proven.”

Chris Simon gave the Flames a 1-0 lead on their first power-play goal of the series on a rush up ice.

Simon had three chances, too. He caught a huge break when Tampa Bay defenseman Darryl Sydor fell down as Iginla came into the Bolts’ zone with the puck. Iginla sprinted down the right side and passed the puck over to Simon.

Lightning goalie Nikolai Khabibulin made the first and second stops, but Simon continued to the net and poked home the rebound on his third try, while Martin St. Louis, who played poorly, more or less quit chasing him.

Four minutes later, Fredrik Modin lost the puck in the high slot in Calgary’s zone, and Shean Donovan got a two-on-one break with Chuck Kobesaw the other way against St. Louis. He took away the pass, forcing Donovan to take a tough-angle wrist shot coming through the left circle.

But Donovan had just enough space to place the puck inside the right post for a 2-0 Flames lead.

For most of the first 40 minutes, the game was nothing more than bang-and-crash hockey, with tackling all over the ice.

When was the last time the two top stars in a Cup final dropped their gloves? It happened 6 minutes into the game when Lecavalier elbowed Iginla in the head.

Iginla retaliated behind the net, and the two started jabbing as they swung around into the crease before dropping gloves. Iginla won the fight, too. You’d have to go back pretty far to find the two best players in a series squaring off. No one could remember it happening in the last 20 years.

“It was a pretty physical shift,” Lecavalier said of the incident. “We’re both in the corner. There’s a lot of emotion, and something happens.”

Hitting was what the first period was all about. Marcus Nilson simply buried Cory Stillman early on, and the hits kept coming. There were seven penalties totaling 20 minutes, and it prevented any flow to the game.

There were two very different officiating styles in Kerry Fraser, who prefers to let players play, and Bill McCreary, who prefers to call it tight. What resulted was roughhouse hockey and penalties.

Stillman had one shift on which he hit three different Flames. Stephane Yelle tried to answer the very next shift he was out. It was like that the entire period.

When there was five-on-five play, the Flames went to a trap, again neutralizing Tampa Bay’s ability to create offense off the rush. There were just seven shots in the first period.