Iginla Punches, Passes and Scores as Calgary Shuts Out Tampa Bay

Not much spectacular playmaking in game three of the Stanley Cup Final, but Calgary and Tampa Bay delivered plenty of teeth-rattling hits. Jarome Iginla and Vincent Lecavalier set the tone when they dropped the gloves for a battle of the captains in the first period. Iginla was the one who also ended up on the scoresheet, as the Flames defeated the Lightning 3-0 Saturday to take the upper hand in the series.

The Iginla-Lecavalier fight was about the only Flames' highlight from the first half of the game, as Calgary looked sluggish and allowed Tampa Bay to control the flow.

But as coach Darryl Sutter later said, it was a "30-second game." The 30 seconds in question came with about seven minutes left in the second period: Flames' goalie Miikka Kirprusoff stopped Brad Richards on a short-handed breakaway; on the ensuing faceoff, Iginla tore up the ice and fed the puck to Chris Simon, who took three cracks at it before scoring the first goal of the game.

Shean Donovan made it 2-0 barely three minutes later, when he finished a two-on-one by picking the top corner over the shoulder of Lightning goalie Nikolai Khabibulin. Donovan, who has five goals in these playoffs, always seems to get the prettiest ones.

Kiprusoff had to make a handful of good saves early in the third period to preserve the 2-0 lead. But the Calgary defense corps shares a collective first star with its goaltender. They allowed just 21 shots and stifled Tampa's deadly trio of Lecavalier, Martin St. Louis and Ruslan Fedotenko for most of the night. Fedotenko left the game with a nasty looking welt on his cheek after being run into the boards by Robyn Regher midway through the third.

The Flames' forechecking was also effective, as the Tampa Bay defensemen were rarely able to generate clean breakout plays from their own zone.

Iginla added a power play goal with 1:32 left, finishing with the proverbial Gordie Howe hat trick: a goal, an assist and a fight.

The Flames lead the Stanley Cup Final series 2-1. Game four is Monday night in Calgary. Here are complete scores and recaps from the 2004 Stanley Cup Final.