The sweep of the NHL from Tuesday starts in Calgary where Karri Ramo starred in the Flames’ 3-1 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning; Ramo made 30 saves for the win.
Matt Stajan, David Jones and Lance Bouma scored for the Flames and Mark Giordano added two assists on the night.
“It means a lot,” Giordano said. “You’ve got to get in there and you’ve got to rack up the 
points and solidify yourself and keep moving up. Obviously, with how close our division is, it’s going to be a battle right to the end. You have some big games coming up. We have to rack up some points.”
Ramo has won nine of his last 13 games and is among the main reasons the Flames are now moving up the western conference ladder.
“There’s no secret in the NHL: If you have a goalie playing the way [Ramo] is playing, you’re going to have success,” Stajan said. “On any team, the goaltender’s the most important position … I will never deny that, and he’s been great for us.”
Steven Stamkos scored late for the Lightning in a game that was already decided.
“It’s frustrating,” Stamkos said. “No one’s feeling sorry for us right now. We can’t sit here and pout. We’ve got to do something about it. We can’t just keep saying the right things; we’ve got to do it. It starts with me. I’ve got to be better.”
Stamkos gave some credit to Ramo in the loss but placed blame on the Bolts themselves.
“I’m not taking anything away from [Ramo], but I don’t think we tested him enough,” Stamkos said. “I don’t think we had enough quality chances. He did make some nice saves, but we’re a group that should have some more quality chances than that and we didn’t do that tonight.”
In Columbus, Zach Parise scored a hat trick to propel the Minnesota Wild to a 4-2 win over the Blue Jackets Tuesday.
“Tonight was probably our best game in the offensive zone in quite a while, just the amount of time we spent in there,” Parise said. “It’s been a while since we had one of those.”
Columbus had won two straight before the loss and seemed detached most of the game.
“There wasn’t an emotional attachment to the game,” Blue Jackets captain Nick Foligno said. “There wasn’t a big play or a big hit to get the team into it. We allowed them to take over. We were in the game the whole game but we weren’t able to get that killer instinct.”
The Wild’s Mikko Koivu was injured in the first period and taken to hospital for observation; the injury caused reshuffling of the lines and something of a fire drill on the bench.
“Everybody played with everybody,” Wild coach Mike Yeo said. “It was mass confusion on the bench. It was amazing we didn’t take any too-many-men-on-the-ice penalties.”
The Blue Jackets fell to 15-23-3 on the season.
“The key part of the game is who blinks first,” Columbus coach John Tortorella said. “We had the 4-on-4 and they scored. I don’t have a problem with our effort. You have to give [Minnesota] credit for the way they played.”
Foligno was less complimentary of the Wild’s style of play said, “They play a boring style of play. They lull you to sleep and wait for you to crack. They showed that tonight. They’re not worried about a 2-1 lead. They played the same way.”
In a rare complete effort, the New York Rangers easily handled the Dallas Stars in New York, 6-2.
The defense set the stage by limiting the Stars’ shots in the first period to give the offense a chance to m make something happen.
“You know you’re playing the right way for sure when you have that success early, especially when you get a lead,” Rangers defenseman Marc Staal said. “You take the first half of the first period and we knew we could play with them, and with the way things have been going for us, that did well for our confidence going forward in the game.”
Derek Stepan scored twice and Jayson Megna picked up his first goal of the season for the Rangers.
“We knew coming into this that we had a mission to shut them down, that their offense was very, very dangerous,” Rangers coach Alain Vigneault said. “At the same time, though, if you can defend well, sometimes those teams will give you some looks and that’s sort of what happened. We got the right looks, we got the right turnovers and we were able to capitalize on a few.”
Keith Yandle, Derick Brassard and Viktor Stalberg also scored for New York and Rick Nash had three assists.
New York has won two of three and looked good in the loss despite the 3-0 decision in Sunrise.
“If I look at this game and I break it down, we did a lot of the same things we did in Florida, but this time we scored,” Vigneault said. “In Florida, we couldn’t score. We generated a lot of opportunities there, defended real well, and we did the same thing tonight against one of the elite teams in the League and we were able to pull out a win.”
Dallas was not happy with any part of its performance.
“[We played] played stupid hockey and it’s not good enough,” Dallas’ Jamie Benn said. “It’s pretty plain and simple. We’re here to do a job and we didn’t do it tonight.”
“It’s myself, not leading the way,” he added. “I didn’t do a good job of that tonight. I played a terrible game.”
The issue for the Rangers is winning consecutive games, a feat that has eluded them since late November.
“We’ll find out against Washington,” Vigneault said. “We talk about taking steps, but if you analyze our process, our process has been getting better. We’re playing better hockey. Our execution and battle level is better. We have three days here to get ready for Washington.”
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