CALGARY, Alberta (AP) – Good game, bad game. Good game, bad game.

For a month, the Tampa Bay Lightning have followed an unswerving course in the playoffs – play very well in one game, play poorly in the next.

Stay to form in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup final Monday night and the Lightning will even up the series with Calgary. If not, they will be very close to handing the Cup to the Flames, who are threatening to become one of the most improbable champions in NHL history.

That’s why the Lightning find themselves at a crossroads in hockey-obsessed Calgary, where the high temperature Sunday was 30 degrees lower than in Tampa but the heat was definitely on them following their 3-0 loss Saturday in Game 3. They knew it, too.

“I know (the talk is) Tampa Bay got beat up again and they were outworked this, that and the other thing,” coach John Tortorella said Sunday. “I don’t buy that. I thought the game was closer than 3-0, but they simply got it done. The key to winning a seven-game series is how long you can keep it (momentum) on your side, and we’ll be there (Monday) night.”

If they start matching the Flames’ intensity, commitment to defense and willingness to pay any price physically – star Jarome Iginla is doing as much fighting as goal scoring – the Lightning could quickly reverse the series. But Tampa Bay’s superior offense needs to get better, and quickly; the Lightning have been outscored 8-5, with all but one of their goals coming in a 4-1 victory in Game 2.

The Lightning have another worry as they await the most important game in the franchise’s 12-year history. They’ve let the Flames, who have shown an ability to ratchet up their performance level whenever necessary, get tantalizingly close to a Cup that would be wildly celebrated not only in Calgary but throughout Canada.

Even after taking out 100-point teams Vancouver, Detroit and San Jose and being halfway through eliminating another, the Flames are maintaining the same we’re-not-supposed-to-win theme that has motivated them throughout the playoffs.

“Anybody who thinks that you are not the underdog, we are the underdog,” coach Darryl Sutter said. “We know that. We believe that.”

They don’t play like that.

In Game 3, Iginla willingly fought Vincent Lecavalier – stars rarely trade punches in such an important game – and tough guy Chris Simon absorbed a harder hit slamming himself into the boards celebrating a goal than he did from any Lightning player.

By contrast, Lightning stars Lecavalier, Martin St. Louis and Brad Richards have not played with the consistency they did in previous rounds. They’ve twice allowed Flames goalie Miikka Kiprusoff to have relatively easy nights, when he doesn’t face strong follow-up attempts or flurries of shots.

Asked if NHL regular-season scoring champion St. Louis must play better, Tortorella said, “He has to … they all have to raise their game. It’s not a criticism, it’s not calling them out, but as each game goes by in a finals, they better raise their level.”

Tortorella wouldn’t say if forward Ruslan Fedotenko will play Monday. Fedotenko, who has 10 playoff goals, was visibly dazed and cut his face while being slammed into the boards late in Game 3 by Robyn Regehr. He is listed as day to day.

“He seems fine to me,” Lightning captain Dave Andreychuk said. “He took a blow there, but he looked more scared to me than anything else.”

Andreychuk also isn’t worried about the Lightning’s ability to take a hit and come back.

“We’re going to continue to battle, and that’s how we’re going to win this series,” he said.

If they don’t, the sixth-seeded Flames will become the lowest-seeded team to win a Cup since the present eight-team seeding format was adopted in 1993; fifth-seeded New Jersey won in 1995. Since 1990, the only Cup champions with fewer regular season points than the Flames’ 94 were the two Mario Lemieux-led Penguins teams, 1990-91 (88) and 1991-92 (87). Detroit also had 94 in 1997.