Flames   Team Page   Schedule   Stats

Sharks   Team Page   Schedule   Stats

SAN JOSE, California (Ticker) -- All it took for the Calgary Flames and Miikka Kiprusoff to bounce back was another road game.

Kiprusoff set a team record with his fourth playoff shutout and Jarome Iginla and Marcus Nilson scored on consecutive shots in the first period as the Flames moved within one win of the Stanley Cup Finals with a 3-0 blanking of the San Jose Sharks .

Kiprusoff surrendered four goals on 16 shots and was pulled after two periods in Game Four of the Western Conference finals, a 4-2 home loss. Taking the ice just over 24 hours later, he survived a couple of early near-misses and made 19 saves to break Mike Vernon's 1989 club mark for playoff shutouts.

"It's never fun to get pulled out," Kiprusoff said. "When they pulled me, I was already thinking forward to this game. ... I think it's also like how the whole team plays. We bounce back when we lose. I think that's the biggest thing."

As they did in the first two games at San Jose, the Flames grabbed a 2-0 lead. While killing a penalty six minutes into the opening period, Iginla picked off a pass by Vincent Damphousse in his own zone and skated in ahead of the defense on his backhand.

"We talked about it so much. In our building, we want to get the momentum and play very well in the first period and we fell into the same kind of game," Damphousse said.

Evgeni Nabokov made a lunging attempt at a pokecheck, but Iginla pushed the puck past the prone goaltender for his league-leading ninth playoff goal and first shorthanded tally.

"I got pretty lucky," Iginla said. "He stacked the pads and it snuck just under his pads there. It was awesome to see that cross the line."

Just over two minutes later, Ville Nieminen shrugged off a hook by Niko Dimitrakos that drew a delayed penalty. Nieminen pulled up at the top of the right faceoff circle and whipped a pass to Nilson, who blasted a one-timer from the top of the slot past a screened Nabokov.

"Nieminen made a great play on the second one," Flames center Craig Conroy said. "It was a battle and Marcus got a screen in front and shot it through."

Conroy padded the lead in the second period for the Flames, who can clinch their first trip to the Stanley Cup Finals since 1989 with a win at home on Wednesday night.

That's easier said than done in a series in which the visiting team has won the first five games for just the third time in NHL history.

"It's definitely different and I can't put my finger on it, I don't think anybody can," Iginla said. "I know that we love playing at home."

Nabokov stopped 18 shots for the Sharks, who have lost four straight home games for the first time since the 1999-2000 season.

"Where that performance came from, I really have no idea," San Jose coach Ron Wilson said. "It wasn't one or two guys, it was almost the whole team struggling. You have to give Calgary some credit, but we really did a pretty good job of shooting ourselves in the foot with some pretty elementary mistakes."

San Jose had its chances early. Seconds after Iginla scored, Alex Korolyuk 's shot from the left circle trickled through Kiprusoff, who fell backwards and smothered the puck along the goal line.

With the Sharks trailing, 2-0, Korolyuk's wrister from the top of the right circle hit the right shoulder of Flames defenseman Jordan Leopold , got a piece of Kiprusoff and glanced off the right goalpost.

"Early, Kipper didn't really look very sharp," Wilson noted. "He was struggling like heck to stop the puck."

San Jose never tested Kiprusoff again, totaling just four shots in the third period.