CALGARY, Alberta (AP) -- After an agonizing two minutes in the penalty box, Calgary's Clarke Wilm came out a hero.

Wilm's short-handed goal at 9:59 of the second period gave the Flames the lead and sent them to a 4-2 victory Sunday over the struggling Vancouver Canucks.

As the Flames finished killing a 47-second two-man disadvantage, and with defenseman Steve Smith still in the box, Wilm stepped out, scooped up a loose puck at center ice and had a clean breakaway. He beat Felix Potvin high on the glove side.

"When you're in the box and it's a 1-1 game, you've got a little sweat on you as you don't want them to score, especially when you took a bad penalty like I did," said Wilm, who's tied with New Jersey's John Madden for the NHL lead with three short-handed goals.

"It was nice to get the puck right on my stick. It opened up for me and I moved in and shot and fortunately for me it went in the top corner," Wilm said.

Jarome Iginla gave Calgary a commanding 3-1 lead just over two minutes later with a power-play goal.

"That was the turning point in the game," Vancouver coach Marc Crawford said. "We had one power play that didn't work tonight and that was that one and we had one penalty kill that wasn't very good and that was the one they scored on."

Hnat Domenichelli and Valeri Bure also scored for the Flames, 7-2-2 in their past 11 games. Fred Brathwaite made 16 saves to improve to 11-8-3.

Markus Naslund and Alexander Mogilny scored for Vancouver, 2-12-3 in its last 17 games and 0-6-3 in its last nine road games.

"There's no secret to this game, it's all about hard work and the Flames are an excellent example of that," Crawford said. "They don't do anything fancy but they work extremely hard and they have a lot of wins lately to show for it."

It is the first time Calgary has been at .500 this season and the latest in a season that the Flames have been at .500 since the lockout-shortened 1994-95 season.

Trailing 3-1 entering the third, Mogilny scored at 2:54 to slice the deficit to one but that was all they would get against Brathwaite.

Potvin's record dropped to 6-16-3 with four of the losses coming to the Flames -- two with the New York Islanders.

Vancouver captain Mark Messier missed the game because of recurring knee problems. He missed 15 games earlier in the season.