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The focus in Calgary hockey usually revolves around two players — Flames captain Jarome Iginla and goaltender Miikka Kiprusoff — and usually for good reason.

Kiprusoff won 40 games for the second season in a row; before that, no goaltender in the Flames history had ever won more than 39. Iginla scored 94 points in just 70 games; if he had played all 82, he would have challenged for the National Hockey League scoring title again.

But when the Flames open their first-round playoff series against the Detroit Red Wings on Thursday, one of the keys to success may be the presence and the play of defenceman Robyn Regehr.

The Red Wings rely heavily on centre Pavel Datsyuk for scoring. The fact that they gave him a seven-year, $46.9-million (U.S.) contract extension last week was not a coincidence. That pricey vote of confidence in their ultraslick scoring star was a message. They believe he can follow up an exceptional regular season with a dominating postseason, something he hasn't done previously in his career.

Datsyuk has scored only three goals in 42 career playoff games, and none in his past 26 games dating back to 2002 against the Colorado Avalanche. There were mitigating circumstances behind last season's struggles against the Edmonton Oilers, as he had a knee injury down the stretch and never really quite got going.

The season before that, in a second-round loss to Calgary, it was Regehr's physical play that caused most of Datsyuk's problems. The Flames played the body relentlessly against the Red Wings in their 2004 playoff upset victory and understand that even with all the changes Detroit made, playing tough is still their best chance for success.

"You need to be physical and fast against them," Flames head coach Jim Playfair said, "but you have to do it within the rules of the game."

According to Regehr, Datsyuk can present "a lot of challenges sometimes. He's an extremely good one-on-one player. He's probably top 10 in the NHL in that department. If you get caught watching the puck on him, you're in a lot of trouble.

"There's also his passing, he's a very good setup man. It depends upon who Detroit has playing with him, but if those guys get open, he's extremely talented and able to find them with good passes, so you've got to make sure you're on him all the time quickly and be very physical on him to try and take away those options."

All this presupposes that Regehr will be available for the series opener. The defenceman injured his leg in the first period of last Thursday's loss to the San Jose Sharks and hasn't played since. He was one of only a handful of Calgary players who turned up Monday for a "maintenance day;" the rest of the team will practise Tuesday and then fly out afterward to prepare for the opener in Detroit.

Playfair called Regehr a "game-time decision."

"It's positive in that the injury wasn't as bad as all of us thought originally," Regehr said. "I'm going to travel and see how it goes. It's a day-to-day thing. We'll see how it feels as I do more."

Regehr said he wasn't deliberately trying to hide the extent of his injury. "If I knew, I'd tell you. It's something where you have to go through the rehabilitation and the exercises and get to feel more comfortable and stronger. Once I feel that way and get cleared to play, I'll be out there."

Detroit is a different team than it was three years ago. The Wings added two players, Kyle Calder and Todd Bertuzzi, at the trade deadline, just in case they fell into a first-round meeting with the Flames or another ultraphysical team.

For that matter, Calgary isn't quite the dominating physical team it once was. When they added more skill up front, the Flames also surrendered a bit of their edgy play. Most of the toughness lies with their blueline crew — from Dion Phaneuf and his highlight-reel hits to Regehr's grinding-it-out-on-every-shift approach.

"A team like Detroit, they're such a puck-possession and transition team that the most effective way to beat them is to play a hard-nosed game and be very physical against them," Regehr said.

"You got to remember it's a playoff series. You can't come out and just play 20 minutes of the first game and try to establish that and then move away from that. You have to make sure you have all the guys committed to that style for the entire length you're playing.

"When it comes down to the playoffs, you're not worrying about any other teams; you're just worried about matching up your first line against their first line and on down the line to the defencemen and the goaltenders. If we do that and play the way we're supposed to and to what we're capable of . . . we're looking forward to the matchup."