When the Calgary Flames began the 2003-04 season, their goaltending situation looked pretty solid on paper.

At the NHL level, they retained their prior season’s tandem of starter Roman Turek and backup Jamie McLennan. They had one goaltending slot in their shared American Hockey League affiliate, the Lowell Lock Monsters, and that spot was allocated to fourth-year pro Dany Sabourin. 2000 first-round pick Brent Krahn was slated to go pro and play for the ECHL’s Las Vegas Wranglers.

But things quickly went sideways.

Early in the season, a goal-mouth collision with San Jose’s Alyn McAuley led to a brief concussion-related absence for Turek. He missed a single game, but injured his knee his first game back while (unsuccessfully) trying to prevent a goal from Buffalo’s Ales Kotalik. At first, the early word was the club was going to wait and see how Turek’s “tweak” progressed. But his absence stretched on and on as the prognosis gradually worsened.

“Roman gets injured and you’re sure not the magnitude of it,” recalled McLennan, now an analyst for TSN. “Back then it was ‘Roman hurt his knee, we’ll see.’ Is it a couple weeks? You’re not sure, right? And then it just ended up being, I think it was three months before he came back.”

With Turek out, the Flames called up Sabourin from Lowell, and the early indications were that McLennan would be the primary starter with Sabourin, off to a great start in Lowell, spelling him off from time to time. But Sabourin just couldn’t win a game at the NHL level, picking up the L in his first three starts despite performing well.

“I think what happened is early on it was like ‘Oh he’ll be out a week or two, Jamie and Dany can handle things,’” said McLennan. “And then as it stretched, maybe the diagnosis got worse, or was gonna take longer, you’re not gonna put all your eggs in our basket, type of thing. People knew what I was. I knew what I was. I could still give you short-term starter minutes, but I wasn’t going to give you 40 games straight, type of thing, and Dany was just a kid.”

Not wanting losses to keep piling up and facing the prospect of having to pile starts onto McLennan, head coach and general manager Darryl Sutter began looking for options to ease his workload.

“We were looking,” said David Marcoux, the Flames’ goaltending coach at the time. “I was hearing rumblings. Obviously Darryl being the head coach and the general manager, there were some things that he could share and some things that he kept to himself, more upstairs with management. Certain names came up at the table.”

On Nov. 16, 2003 – three days after Sabourin’s third loss – the Flames traded a conditional draft pick (which, based on conditions, would likely become a 2005 second-round pick) to San Jose in exchange for Miikka Kiprusoff. At the time, Kiprusoff was behind Evgeni Nabokov and Vesa Toskala and, with the Sharks unwilling to risk losing him for nothing on waivers, a trade was inevitable.

“Darryl knew obviously Miikka from his time in San Jose and understanding as soon as one was going to be put on waivers he was going to be taken away,” said Marcoux. “So he initiated a trade before anything else and the rest is history with Miikka, for sure.”

“I was in San Jose and I knew I was going to get traded,” said Kiprusoff, recalling the trade during a press conference prior to his number retirement in March 2024. “That was the plan. I went to training camp and for me, it took a little longer. I was training hard because I knew if they traded, I was going to get other chance, and I have to be ready. I have to. So came here, I was excited. I talked with Darryl and he was like ‘If you play well, you’re going to get games so you better be ready.’ For me it was unreal. A new chance, and it worked out well.”

“I knew what he was capable of being and doing,” said Sutter, recalling the trade during an appearance on Sportsnet 960 The Fan in 2024. “And I knew that we needed a top goaltender.”

Kiprusoff made his Flames debut on Nov. 20, making 22 saves in a 2-1 win over the Montreal Canadiens. The netminding tandem stabilized for six weeks, with Kiprusoff being backed up by McLennan, until the Finnish newcomer was briefly sidelined after tweaking his knee in late December against Minnesota when a player fell on him in his crease. During his time on the shelf, Kiprusoff worked on his puck-handling.

“I remember when I get hurt, and usually then if you can’t skate you always can work something,” said Kiprusoff. “Puck-handling wasn’t my best thing when I came here but I think I improved a lot. I worked with the Ds pretty much every day, every practice, and we did simple things. I wasn’t a goalie that was going to score, but help the Ds play, make their game easier, just make simple moves, so that’s what I worked a lot.”

In Kiprusoff’s absence McLennan made 10 consecutive starts before Turek returned from his injury in late January – Turek’s return came at a perfect time, as McLennan had been playing with an injured sternum suffered before Christmas which limited how much he could move his arms while tending goal. Kiprusoff returned in early February, which allowed McLennan some recovery time (before he was traded for Chris Simon prior to the trade deadline).

Kiprusoff won his first three starts after returning from his knee injury and quickly developed a reputation as a big-game goaltender that wouldn’t wilt under pressure. Fans on the CalgaryPuck message board developed a shorthand for close games where Kiprusoff stood on his head: a Kipper Special.

On Mar. 31, the Flames hosted Phoenix with a chance to clinch their first playoff berth since 1996 with a victory. The result? A 27-save shutout win – the Kipper Special – that sent the Flames to the post-season.

“Two weeks prior to the end of the season, we were on the outside looking into a playoff spot,” said Marcoux. “And then the critical game, we play the [Phoenix] Coyotes and he shuts the door.”

Kiprusoff played 39 games for the Flames in 2003-04’s regular season, winning 24 games and posting a 1.69 goals against average in the process – at the time a modern-day NHL record – and solidified the Flames’ crease at a time where their season could have gone in a radically different direction.

“For me it was like a second chance,” said Kiprusoff. “The team started going well, so for me, the whole year was unbelievable. The whole run was unbelievable.”

Kiprusoff started all 26 games for the Flames during their run to the 2004 Stanley Cup Final, with five of his 15 post-season victories during that stretch being shutouts. Following the 2004-05 lockout, Kiprusoff remained a fixture in the Flames’ net, appearing in 70 or more games in each of the following seven seasons.

Speaking following his jersey retirement ceremony in March 2024, Kiprusoff credited Sutter with giving him the opportunity in Calgary.

“He means a lot,” said Kiprusoff. “I learned a lot from him. He was coaching in San Jose and he traded [for] me here. And I think from him I learned what it takes to be a real starting goalie. It takes more, and I’m really thankful for Darryl and everything he did for me.”