Beauchemin made for a less-than-beautiful way for the Flames

One minute and six seconds into game six, Calgary was elmininated from the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

While not actually eliminated - they still had two games to lose - the Flames lost their trademarked intensity and determination by giving up on their style of play that got them to that point in that moment. I say this because at 1:06 of the first period of game six, Jarome Iginla, aware of the five minute penalty that awaited him, decided to take himself out the game by challenging Francois Beauchemin to a fight.

Suddenly the series was as much about one player versus another for the Flames than one team versus another team. The collective passion and discipline that coach Darryl Sutter ingrained in this underachieving team that carried them to the 2004 Stanley Cup Final dissipated at the hands of their own captain. The moral victory of capturing the Northwest Division and the accompanying home ice advantage is fleeting without Sutter's teachings.

I don't want to rag on Iginla. He didn't single-handedly cost them the next two games. But it was that fight symbolized the change in the play of the Flames. The TSN Apple Auto Glass Turning Point if you will. One selfish moment by an otherwise selfless player altered the direction of the series for the Flames in the same vein as Saku Koivu's injury hurt the Canadiens in their series.

But like the Canadiens, the Flames were a fragile team, one that scored the least amount of goals of any of the playoff teams this season. They relied on positional hockey - i.e. a quasi-trap system, dump and chase, etc. - because they lacked the firepower to take over a game. The rest was left up to the often miraculous goaltending of Mikka Kiprusoff - a most deserving Hart Trophy Candidate. The Flames could ill-afford not to have someone with the abilities and credentials of Iginla on the ice. Jarome knows this because we all know this.

Yet, Iginla dropped the gloves. And the Flames dropped the next two games. So, logically he is to blame. Isn't he?

Well, not entirely. The Mighty Ducks outplayed, outworked and outhustled the Flames. They were "monsters" - a la personal favourite hockey colour commentator Pierre Maguire. They earned those two wins. The performance of Anaheim over the last two games legitimizes the adjective 'Mighty' in their Disney-brand of a name.

But it honestly felt like the Flames rolled over and lost the series after Beauchemin surprised Iginla with a flurry of left-hands that knocked the Flames captain to the ice. Calgary just never seemed to get back up again. The players were down. The fans were down. Even the perpetual excitement conveyor Don Wittman was down. The once great series crawled to its anti-climatic finale.

While I will lament the prospects of a Battle of Alberta series with upstart Edmonton, it is the finish of the Flames that is most disappointing. I am sure this a feeling shared across southern Alberta and focused in the locker room of a team that failed to play up to their Stanley Cup contending aspirations.

For the sake of "what might have been", next time, I bet Iginla would keep his gloves on.

(Mind you, in true Gregg Easterbrook fashion, I put the blame squarely on this decision of the Calgary Police. In football, Easterbrook often postulates that the football gods reward the team whose cheerleaders bare the most skin. Perhaps the keeping on of women's tops on the Red Mile was the cause of the Flames demise? Add it to the rest of my data for the graduate school paper I intend to write.)