Saved from accolades

CALGARY, Alberta -- Their numbers have been impossible to ignore, but the two star netminders of the postseason, Calgary's Miikka Kiprusoff and Tampa Bay's Nikolai Khabibulin, have been somewhat overlooked, according to Flames GM/head coach Darryl Sutter.

"I remember last year, watching the finals," recalled Sutter, summoning the names of much-lauded netminders Martin Brodeur (New Jersey) and Jean-Sebastien Giguere (Anaheim). "You look at how Khabibulin and Kipper have played, and I don't think they have gotten the credit."

That may be true to a point, but not because the backstoppers have been anything less than sensational. It's just that a handful of skaters have done a better job at capturing everyone's imagination.

Giguere, whose Ducks fell to the Devils last season, won the Conn Smythe Award as the postseason's most valuable player. But after Game 6 here last night, which the Lightning won, 3-2, in overtime to force Game 7, Calgary's Jarome Iginla and Tampa Bay's Brad Richards (he of the postseason-record seven game-winning goals) and Martin St. Louis (he of the game-winner last night) were better positioned as MVP.

Even if he clinches the Cup with a Game 7 shutout, Kiprusoff could not make a convincing case that he has meant more to the Flames than Iginla, their steel-jawed captain. And Khabibulin probably needed a shutout last night and in Game 7 to be considered a legit candidate for the Smythe.

No time to fold

Lightning coach John Tortorella, edgy and dismissive with his comments following his club's Game 5 loss in Tampa, said yesterday morning that he has been impressed with the Bolts' resilience throughout the playoffs.

"We know where we're at," said Tortorella, who grew up in Concord, Mass. "But it's still a series and we're not dead yet. We feel we are a good club so it's a matter of a two-and-a-half-hour segment here, a 60-minute game, to find a way to win. Then you have a Game 7.

"So at this stage of the game, the getting down when you lose, and worrying about being too high when you win, I think I will speak for our club -- we have matured in that area. We know where we're at after each game. We just go about doing our things in our locker room and just getting prepared for the next day."

Special players

Richards, with his seven postseason game-winners, nosed ahead of Joe Sakic and Joe Nieuwendyk, each with six. Pretty good company. Not to mention the four players who each had five game-winners in a playoff season: Mike Bossy, Jari Kurri, Bobby Smith, and Mario Lemieux . . . Sutter on the importance of special teams: "I think it becomes important when, well, any time something doesn't work, then that's when it becomes important, right? Our focus going into Game 5 was to be a better team offensively, five on five. I think we scored three goals in the series five on five. We scored two in the last game, and that ended up being the difference.". . . Flames fans were in full zeal early in the day. Traffic snaked along the banks of the Bow River, the tributary that runs through downtown, with horns honking incessantly as early as noon -- six hours before the puck dropped . . . In a very rare move, the league reacted to the Flames' objections of the work of referee Kerry Fraser in Game 4 here and pulled him from his Game 6 assignment. Bill McCreary and Stephen Walkom worked the whistles in Game 6 . . . Flames winger Ville Nieminen, bounced with a one-game suspension for his heavy hit on Vincent Lecavalier in Game 4, was back in the lineup for Game 6 . . . Anticipating possible riots in the streets if the Flames were to win, the Calgary Police Department beefed up security all around town.