NEW YORK, 1 May 2004 — The Tampa Bay Lightning advanced to the NHL’s Eastern Conference finals for the first time after they completed a series sweep of the Montreal Canadiens with a 3-1 victory in Montreal on Thursday.

The win gives Tampa Bay the best-of-seven Eastern Conference second round series 4-0 and they will now meet the winner of the Philadelphia/Toronto series in the Conference finals. The winner of that series will meet the Western Conference champions for the Stanley Cup.

“To get a series done four straight is certainly going to help us because we have some guys banged up,” Tampa Bay coach John Tortorella said. Nikolai Khabibulin made 27 saves to help the Lightning hand the Canadiens their first series sweep since Buffalo eliminated them in the second round of the 1998 playoffs. It was only the fourth seven-game series sweep in Montreal’s long history. The Lightning have now won seven straight playoff games. Their last loss was to the New York Islanders in the second game of the first round of the playoffs.

Niklas Sundstrom gave the Canadiens the lead just 5:46 into the game, but that was the only goal Khabibulin, who leads the playoffs with a 0.99 goals against average and four shutouts, conceded. Montreal held their lead until the Lightning’s Dan Boyle scored his first goal of the playoffs midway through the second period before Brad Richards then made a brilliant move to score on a backhand at 17:14 of the second period.

Red Wings Tie Series With Flames

The Detroit Red Wings tied their NHL Western Conference semifinal series with the Calgary Flames with a 4-2 victory in Calgary on Thursday.

Detroit’s 37-year-old goaltender Curtis Joseph, who only regained the starting spot from Manny Legace after the first four games of the opening series against Nashville, had a strong game, making several key saves to help the top-seeded Red Wings even the series at 2-2 against the sixth-seeded Flames.

The Wings opened the scoring just 26 seconds into the game when Kirk Maltby fired a wrist shot past Miikka Kiprusoff. Detroit made it 2-0 three minutes into the second period with Boyd Devereaux’s goal, before Calgary struck back by scoring the quickest two goals in playoff history, just 18 seconds apart, a few minutes later to tie the game.

Martin Gelinas scored his fourth playoff goal at 5:45 then Ville Nieminen added another at 6:03 of the second period to tie the score at 2-2. Mathieu Dandenault nudged the puck through the crease at 10:02 of the third period to score the go-ahead goal before Henrik Zetterberg scored into an empty net with 24 seconds remaining. Detroit outshot Calgary 29-27.