FanHouse EricNystrom

It took seven tries to do it and now the Calgary Flames can say that they have beaten the Chicago Blackhawks during the 2008-09 season. Heading into Game Three tonight, the Flames had lost all six meetings with the Hawks this year. In front of a raucous "C of Red" at home in Calgary, the Flames emphatically ended that streak against a Patrick Kane-less Hawks team.

During each of the first two games of this series, the Flames blew leads in Chicago. That wouldn't be the case tonight as they narrowed the Hawks lead in the series to one game with a 4-2 win. It seemed like the young team from the Windy City may have been a bit nervous about their first road playoff game since 2002.

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Okay, so maybe the title is a bit of an overreaction. Still, that doesn't change the fact the New York Islanders are a terrible, terrible third period hockey team, and they proved it once again on Tuesday, giving up four goals in the final 20 minutes on their way to a 5-4 loss to the Rangers.

The Islanders actually entered the third with a 2-1 lead, only to watch the Rangers beat Joey MacDonald -- starting in place of Rick Dipietro -- four times on their final 12 shots. Petr Prucha, playing for the first time in eight games, tied the game just 49 seconds into the third period, while Michal Rozsival gave the Rangers their first lead of the night two minutes later. Markus Naslund and Nigel Dawes also tallied late goals for the Rangers, while Scott Gomez tapped in a tic-tac-toe pass from Nikolai Zherdev and Brandon Dubinsky in the second period, opening the scoring for the Rangers.

Mike Sillinger, Kyle Okposo, Blake Comeau and Mike Comrie scored for the Islanders.

Physical game between the crosstown rivals, resulting in a pair of fights in the first 10 minutes, and capped off with a crushing hit by Ryan Callahan on Trent Hunter early in the third. Callahan smashed the Islanders forward into the penalty box door, forcing it open, resulting in Hunter's midsection smashing off the boards. He was down for quite a while, and appeared to be in severe pain, resulting in a stretcher being brought on the ice. Hunter, however, managed to bring himself to his feet and skate off because, you know, he's a hockey player.

For the most part, Jason Blake has been a rather large free agent bust for the Toronto Maple Leafs. After signing a five-year, $20 million deal with Toronto prior to the 2007 season, Blake scored only 15 goals for Toronto a season ago, and has been a healthy scratch on more than one occasion this season. On Tuesday, Blake scored the game-winning goal in a shootout in rather spectacular fashion -- shown above -- giving the Leafs a 3-2 win over New Jersey.

It's Toronto's third win a row, while the Devils drop their second straight.

After Mike Rupp gave New Jersey a 1-0 lead in the first period, the Leafs received a pair of second period goals from Jeremy Williams and Nik Antropov, before Zach Parise netted a power play goal with 20 seconds to play in the period, tying the game.

Vesa Toskala stopped 25 shots in the win, while also turning aside 3-of-4 shots in the shootout. Scott Clemmensen started for New Jersey, surrendering two goals in regulation on 27 shots.

Now the following video is completely safe for work, but that doesn't mean you will definitely want to watch it. As you know, hockey players wear a lot of equipment. A LOT. As you may not know, Eric Nystrom likes to dance. When those two factors are combined, what we get is a PG-rated (I figure since there's no nudity) strip tease on ice a la the movie Slap Shot. A pretty funny one at that.

But don't hate, it was at a charity benefit. And the Ladies approve of it, so it must be a good thing.