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Friday, Mar. 3 9:00pm ET
Red-hot Iginla nets two goals in win | |||||
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CALGARY, Alberta (AP) -- Jarome Iginla, the NHL's player of the month for February, looks like he wants to win the award for March, too. Iginla continued his sensational play Friday night with two goals as the Calgary Flames moved within one point of a playoff spot with a 4-1 victory over the Anaheim Mighty Ducks. The 22-year-old right wing has picked up points in 15 consecutive games (12 goals, 13 assists), tying him with Luc Robitaille, Jaromir Jagr, Pierre Turgeon and Patrik Elias for the longest streak in the NHL this season. The streak is one short of the Calgary franchise record of 16 set by Gary Suter during the 1987-88 season. "My confidence is up and I'm getting a real good opportunity right now," said Iginla, who along with Marc Savard and Andrei Nazarov have formed Calgary's most consistent line over the past two months. "Brian is playing me more, he's playing me in key situations," Iginla said of coach Brian Sutter, "and I want to pay him back and pay the team back by being someone who can be counted on." It was a big win for Calgary in the Western Conference playoff race as the Flames moved within one point of idle Colorado and San Jose. The Avalanche and Sharks are currently tied for seventh in the conference and occupy the final two playoff spots. Calgary has a game in hand on both. "There's a real logjam there and we don't want to just catch one place, we see this as a real opportunity to jump right up," Iginla said. The 10th-place Mighty Ducks, who were outshot 37-17, fell three points behind Calgary. "When you're playing well and you lose that's one thing, but when you play the way we played tonight, there's not many good things we can say," said Anaheim's Teemu Selanne. "We don't expect it to be easy, but we've got to find a way to get back to our winning ways." Valeri Bure scored his 34th goal and recent call-up Jeff Cowan also scored. The Flames have won three in a row and are 5-1-1 in their last seven games. Savard had an assist to extend his own point-scoring streak to nine games. Kip Miller scored the only goal for Anaheim. Cowan's second-period goal came from a bad angle as he deflected in Jason Wiemer's centering pass from the corner to make it 3-0. Ladislav Kohn filled in for the injured Paul Kariya on the Mighty Ducks top unit. Kariya missed his sixth straight game with a bruised foot. "The effort leaves us with no chance of winning," said Anaheim coach Craig Hartsburg. "The coaches don't have the reason for it, we thought we were ready to play." Hartsburg replaced starter Guy Hebert with Dominic Roussel after Iginla's third-period goal and Roussel stopped all eight shots he faced.
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