Captain Jarome Iginla scored his 10th playoff goal and the Flames advanced to their first Stanley Cup finals in 15 years with a 3-1 victory Wednesday over the San Jose Sharks in Game 6 of the Western Conference finals.
Miikka Kiprusoff made 18 saves for the Flames, whose victory was the first by a home team in the series. The raucous "Red Sea" of fans in the sold-out Saddledome finally had something to cheer as the Flames took an early lead and hung on through the third period.
Martin Gelinas also put the puck in the net for the sixth-seeded Flames, who will open their fourth straight playoff series on the road Tuesday, either at Tampa Bay or Philadelphia.
"You never know when this opportunity is going to come again in your life," said Iginla, who leads the playoffs with 17 points. "You'd like to think it's going to happen every year ... but we know that's not the case. You have to grab it when it comes."
Calgary hasn't been in the NHL's final round since winning the Stanley Cup in 1989 -- and the Canadian anthem will be sung in the finals for the first time since Vancouver made it in 1994. A Canadian team hasn't won the Cup since Montreal's victory in 1993.
"You never pictured this in your wildest dreams," said Craig Conroy, whose steal of a second-period faceoff set up Gelinas' goal. "Everything about this season has just been too good to be true."
Alyn McCauley scored for San Jose, but the best season in franchise history ended with back-to-back losses in the Sharks' first appearance in the conference finals. San Jose also lost its final four home games of the playoffs despite their 104-point regular season and home-ice advantage in every round.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
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Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
A soccer jersey carrying a national map including disputed Western Sahara has become a hot commodity in Morocco after a diplomatic dispute with Algeria. Retailers said RS Berkane jerseys have been flying off the shelves after a Confederation of African Football (CAF) Cup match against Algerian club USM Alger was canceled last month over the jerseys. “We are overwhelmed by the influx of messages and requests,” said Brahim Rabii, representative of the official RS Berkane jersey distributor. Algeria broke off diplomatic relations with Morocco in 2021, partly over the issue of Western Sahara. The former Spanish colony is largely controlled by Morocco, but claimed