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Ex-King Conroy leads Flames past former teammates

Jan 31, 2007 - 7:05 AM CALGARY, Alberta (Ticker) -- When the Calgary Flames had to figure out how to beat the Los Angeles Kings, they turned to a player who should know how.

Ex-Kings center Craig Conroy scored two goals and new dad Stephane Yelle added an important tally as the Flames posted a 4-1 victory over Kings.

David Moss had a goal and Alex Tanguay added two assists for Calgary, which acquired Conroy from Los Angeles on Monday for center Jamie Lundmark and two draft picks.

"I'm proud of Connie," Flames coach Jim Playfair said. "To come back and play with the amount of emotion that was involved in the game, back in the playoff hunt against his former teammates in a friendly building, I think he played well."

A 12-year veteran, Conroy scored the first goal of the game 90 seconds into the second period. The partisan crowd gave him a huge round of applause after the tally.

"I couldn't have scripted it any better if I tried," Conroy said. "I haven't scored in a long time and I was excited and a little nervous at the beginning. After I scored the first one the fans were cheering pretty loud, so that was exciting."

Conroy's last goal came on December 29 against, ironically, Calgary. The 35-year-old center had 60 goals and 128 assists in three-plus seasons in Calgary before signing with Los Angeles as a free agent after the 2003-2004 season.

"That's the most I've played in maybe three months," Conroy said. In L.A. I wasn't killing any penalties and I wasn't on the power play.

"It was fun to be back. I was a little tired and I haven't played that many minutes, but now that I'm back hopefully I can get some confidence and just build on it."

After the Kings' Michael Cammalleri redirected teammate Anze Kopitar's blast from the left point past goaltender Miikka Kiprusoff to cut Calgary's lead to 2-1 just 95 seconds into the final session, Yelle tallied to give the Flames some breathing room.

Yelle, who early on Tuesday became the father of a baby girl, went behind the net to slap in a rebound that went off netminder Sean Burke with 5:56 left to give the Flames a 3-1 advantage.

"It felt good to score," Yelle said. "Marcus Nilson and Jeff Friesen were working the play down low. I just happened to be in the slot at the right time."

Conroy tallied 72 seconds later to put the game out of reach for Calgary, which won its first game after the NHL All-Star break following two straight losses.

"Conroy was nervous," Tanguay said. "You could see he was nervous beforehand. But his smile says it all. We're certainly glad to have him back. I'm one of the guys that doesn't know him all that well, but he seems like a pretty likeable guy so I'm sure he'll fit well with the rest of the team."

Kiprusoff stopped 35 shots and became the first goaltender to win 20 games on his home ice in 2006-07.

Burke made 29 saves for the Kings, who have lost 18 of 24 games on the road this season.

"We made some mistakes tonight," Kings coach Marc Crawford said. "There are areas that we need to correct.

"At the start of the game they obviously had some energy from the crowd with Connie coming back here and they built on that. In the second period, when he got the goal, I thought we were in command but that got the crowd back into it."