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CALGARY — There was a moment, about five minutes into play, when the scoreboard clock at the Pengrowth Saddledome went completely blank. The scores were wiped out; the clock was reset at 20:00 and for a moment there, the Calgary Flames must have wondered: Was their awful start just a bad dream?
Sadly, no.
At the next whistle, everything was restored — most pertinently, the score, which stood at 3-0 in favor of the visiting San Jose Sharks. Starting goaltender Miikka Kiprusoff had been given the hook by coach Mike Keenan; and the usually unflappable Finn showed his unhappiness, throwing his stick and then kicking at it as he stormed into the dressing room. Curtis Joseph came on in relief and the Flames had roughly 56-plus minutes to regroup from an unimaginably poor start.
Miraculously, it turned out to be enough.
Calgary Flames forward Owen Nolan celebrates his game-winning goal with Robyn Regehr against the San Jose Sharks in the third period in Calgary on Sunday. (Patrick Price/Reuters)
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In one of the most unbelievable comebacks in team playoff history, the Flames roared back to score four unanswered goals, defeating the Sharks 4-3 Sunday night and taking a 2-1 lead in their best-of-seven Western Conference semi-final.
Owen Nolan, a former Sharks' captain, capped an impressive night by scoring the decisive game winner with fewer than four minutes to go in regulation, walking out of the left corner and using defenceman Brian Campbell as a screen, firing a shot past goaltender Evgeni Nabokov.
Afterward, a TV close-up of Nabokov showed him shaking his head in disbelief. He wasn't the only one. It was a comeback for the ages and it featured all kinds of heroes — Joseph, who won his first playoff game in four years; Cory Sarich, whose hit on Patrick Marleau changed the momentum in the game; and Jarome Iginla, who scored a first-period power-play goal to get the Flames back on the board.
It all started at the 12:54 mark of the first, when Sarich leveled the Sharks' Patrick Marleau with a crushing and controversial hit along the boards.
"I just saw him curling," said Sarich. "I saw a chance to move up and get a hit in. I know he took a look at me and I was moving backwards at the time. When I started to move forwards, he just kept his head down. I tried to make a clean hit. He didn't happen to see me until the last second."
All shoulder? Or some elbow? The refereeing tandem of Eric Furlatt and Dan O'Halloran ruled it a legal hit. Sarich was originally escorted to the penalty box by the linesman, but was eventually sent back to the Flames' bench. At that point, Sarich wasn't sure what the call was — or if he might even be getting tossed out of the game.
"Well, the linesmen don't know what the refs are going to call," said Sarich. "They were trying to get me out of the scrum and settle things down. I was asking Iggy, 'What's going on? I don't think I deserve a penalty.' Then they escorted me to the bench and told me to get out. I didn't know if they were going to assess something more. I just sat on the bench. They gave me all my gear back. I saw there were no penalty minutes. I think they got it right."
Marleau was left with a bleeding nose and a cut under his right eye and in the inevitable ensuing melee, the Sharks actually ended up playing a man short — and the Flames, on a goal by Iginla, scored to get them back in the game.
The hit by Sarich — and the goal that immediately followed by Iginla brought the capacity crowd back into the game, after the Sharks' early surge sapped the life out of the building.
"We started to feed off that," said Sarich.
Clowe didn't see the hit.
"I was too busy getting scrummed up there to see the replay, but Patty came in and said it was a clean hit. He thought it was a clean hit. If anything, it got them going.
"When you get down 3-0, you know what to expect. We'd do the same. You gotta do something to get going. I don't think we stopped playing physical, we just sat back way too much and they came at us."
Joseph dscribed the Sarich hit this way:
"That was big, no question. You could find that in the dictionary under, 'big hit, momentum changer.' But you also need to put the puck in the net — and we did it. Coming from 3-0 down, it doesn't happen very often. It's very special."
Joseph stopped all 22 shots he faced.
"Certainly, I just tried to make as many saves as I could and keep it close," said Joseph, who wasn't sure if Kiprusoff was eventually going back in for the start of the second.
"You take it as it comes," he said. "We [he and Kiprusoff] talked between periods. He's an unflappable guy. I thought he was the best player in the first two games of the series. He doesn't get fazed very easily, which is a great quality to have — and we're going to need him."
After Iginla's goal, the Flames gradually worked themselves back into the game. Midway through the second, with Kyle McLaren off for elbowing, Iginla and Nolan worked a nice give-and-go, Iginla eventually centring the puck in front for Daymond Langkow to jam home.
The Flames were the aggressors for the rest of the period and Iginla almost tied it before the buzzer, electing to shoot on a three-on-one. Nabokov just got his pad on the puck and the rebound ricocheted out past both Matthew Lombardi and Wayne Primeau, setting up the Sharks for an odd-man chance at the other end, where Joseph turned aside Curtis Brown.
Unbelievably, Calgary then tied the game when Sharks' defenceman Marc-Eduard Vlasic accidentally put the puck in his own net, trying to check Langkow in front of Nabokov, less than two minutes into the third, setting the stage for the wild finish.
Alex Tanguay, who set up Nolan for the winner, said there was no panic on the Flames' bench, even after the Sharks took their big early lead.
"There were still 55 minutes left," said Tanguay. "We have enough experience in this dressing room that we figured, 'We've got almost three periods left and we've scored three goals in a game before.' We were able to play a little better. After that hit, it seemed like we relaxed. It woke us up and the crowd got back in it and we started playing our game and being the aggressor.
"The series is so evenly matched that it comes down to bounces and tonight we got them."
After two rough-and-tumble games in San Jose, the Flames were back on home ice for the first time in more than two weeks, after finishing the regular season with four road games. The playoff atmosphere in Calgary tends be nothing like the sedate regular-season ambience. Centre Craig Conroy said the noise — and the Sea of Red — Flames' patrons all wearing the team's colors — "gives you goose bumps when you walk out …. It's so loud, it's almost deafening."
It was all that — for 26 seconds, or the time it took Stephane Yelle to get called for slashing, which the Sharks promptly turned into Clowe's third of the playoffs. Clowe took a backhand pass from Joe Thornton and found a seam in the Flames' defence and, finding himself with all kinds of open ice, caught the corner on Kiprusoff with his shot.
That came at the 1:31 mark. Less than two minutes later, Marleau came off the boards inside Phaneuf and tipped a Clowe shot past Kiprusoff for a 2-0 lead. From there, it took just 14 seconds more Jonathan Cheechoo to circle the net behind Kiprusoff and centre the puck back to Douglas Murray, pinching in from the left point. Murray scored on his shot — and that was it for Kiprusoff. The line score: three goals on five shots in 3:33 of playing time.
"I don't think I've ever seen a comeback quite like this one," said Tanguay, "from three goals down, in the playoffs, where it's usually so tight. The one off Vlasic's stick, sometimes you need those. We'll enjoy that one tonight and tomorrow we'll see what we can improve on and get ready for Tuesday."
By The Numbers
.952 — Save percentage for Miikka Kiprusoff in the first two games of the series.
.400 — Save percentage for Miikka Kiprusoff in last night's game, after giving up three goals on five shots in 3:33 of playing time, before getting the hook in favor of Curtis Joseph.
5 — Points by Sharks' winger Ryan Clowe in three playoff games. Clowe scored only eight points in 15 regular-season games, missing most of the year as a result of reconstructive knee surgery.
