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Florida’s Radek Dvorak misses the net in the second period with Calgary goalie Miikka Kiprusoff at his mercy. (Lynne Sladky/Associated Press)

The Calgary Flames were quick on the draw on Friday night, parlaying two clean faceoff wins into power-play goals as they opened a road trip with a win over the Florida Panthers.

Mark Giordano’s power-play blast late in the second held up as the winner in the 2-1 victory.

Ales Kotalik opened the scoring late in the first with a power-play goal, his first marker in a Calgary uniform.

The Flames have won consecutive games for the first time in exactly a month and have points in five of the last six (3-1-2) after a marathon losing streak for much of January.

Calgary went into a seventh place tie in the Western Conference with Nashville. The Flames continue their three-game road jaunt Saturday in Tampa Bay.

Kotalik is one of a half-dozen new forwards bought by the club in recent days, but Calgary it has been defensive play that the Flames have allowed to hone against against the likes of Carolina and Florida, two Southeast teams that have struggled to score.

The game pitted two of the NHL’s workhorse netminders, Miikka Kiprusoff of the Flames and Tomas Vokoun of Florida, against each other. Vokoun would be the busier, with Calgary holding a 40-13 shot advantage.

The Panthers showed that inability to score again on Friday. While the shots weren’t in their favour, they had some of the best scoring chances but could not bury them.

The teams traded opportunities early. Niklas Hagman was stopped by Vokoun, while Florida forward Stephen Weiss just missed the right side of the net behind Kiprusoff.

Kiprusoff was tested at the side of the net later in the period by Kamil Kreps, a play in which forward Rostislav Olesz may have been too generous in passing to his teammate.

Vokoun, starting his 17th consecutive game, would stop Hagman in close and Jay Bouwmeester from the point late in the period.

Those two Flames would get assists — Hagman his first in a Calgary uniform — on Kotalik’s sharp-angle goal on the power play with just nine seconds left in the first period. Kotalik’s shot went off a Florida defenceman and past Vokoun.

New addition Matt Stajan started the play with a faceoff win.

Cory Sarich, who took six penalty minutes in Calgary’s last game, was in the box early in the second when Florida tied the game. With the puck bouncing wildly in the slot, Dennis Seidenberg swooped in from the point to one-time a shot high to the glove side past Kiprusoff.

Calgary would outshoot Florida 15-4 in the second but the Panthers would whiff on a pair of 2-on-1 plays that could have changed the momentum of the game.

Olesz missed a half-empty net on a setup from Michael Frolik, while Radek Dvorak shot just wide on a 2-on-1 small-handed opportunity.

Not long after the Dvorak miss, Calgary’s Daymond Langkow won the draw cleanly to Ian White, who registered his second help as a Flame by feeding Giordano for a one-timer at the 17:18 mark of the second.

Giordano has nine goals for the Flames.

Calgary outshot Florida 10-2 in the final period, but Frolik would beat Kiprusoff with a shot early in the period, ringing it off the post.

With Sarich in the box yet again midway through the frame, Chris Higgins made a turnover for Calgary and tested Vokoun with a backhander.

Flames captain Jarome Iginla would take a Stajan pass and unleash a slapshot that made a giant thud sound on Vokoun’s pad.

It was the only meeting this season between the Flames and Panthers.

Another contest for Calgary on Saturday means they will play back-to-back games for the 12th time this season. They are 6-4-1 in the back end of consecutive games.

New startup company Kwedit Inc. is making it simpler for users of free online games like Farmville who don’t have credit or debit cards to pay for the virtual goods sold in such games using cash or third-party payments.

The California-based company on Thursday launched a payment system called Kwedit Direct that allows users in the U.S. to pay for their digital buys after the fact by mailing in cash, paying the bill at a 7-Eleven store or getting a friend or family member to pay on their behalf through a social payment network called Pass the Duck.

The payment system is intended for so-called social games that are free to play but charge a small amount for extra features that are key components of the virtual worlds at the heart of the games. In Farmville, for example, which, with 73.8 million users daily, is the most well loved game on Facebook, players can buy virtual farm animals.

The Kwedit system is available on more than 100 websites so far, including FooPets and PuzzlePirates. Many such sites are well loved with children, who don’t own credit or debit cards.

But Kwedit CEO Danny Shader says that even among adults, 25 per cent of U.S. households don’t have credit cards, and of the remaining 75 per cent, many prefer paying cash.

‘Virtual credit system for the virtual world’

Users of the Kwedit system make what the company calls a Kwedit Promise, which allows them to play the game and pay for their virtual buys later using one of the three Kwedit Direct methods of payment. (The retail option is so far only available at 5,800 7-Eleven stores in the U.S.)

The system works similarly to regular credit: users receive Kwedit Limits and Kwedit Scores and are rewarded for making excellent on their payments.

Conversely, if users don’t keep their promise, they will be given a lower Kwedit Score, which will determine whether they can continue to play.

“[It's a] virtual credit system for the virtual world,” said Shader, although he acknowledged there are people who will not follow through on their promises.

The company hopes to eventually offer its services in Canada.

According to InsideVirtualGoods.com, U.S. sales of virtual goods reached $1 billion US in 2009 and are projected to grow to $1.6 billion in 2010.

Bronze medallist Steve Podborski is greeted by supporters as he skis down Whistler Mountain with the Olympic torch on Friday. (CBC)

The Olympic flame arrived to an emotional welcome Friday in Whistler, B.C., the resort community that will soon welcome the world to the Winter Games.

Just days before it lights the cauldron at the opening ceremonies in Vancouver, the torch stopped at Olympic venues for the first time since the 2010 relay started more than three months ago.

‘It’s exciting. It’s the fire!”‘— Whistler resident Melanie Whittal

It has been seven years since Vancouver and Whistler were awarded the Games, but dreams of staging the Olympics in this silent mountain paradise stretch back much further.

“Whistler has been waiting for this for 50 years, and it’s finally happening,” said torchbearer Jim Moodie, who carried the flame in front of a large sunlit Inukshuk with ski jumpers launching into the air in the distance.

“I’ve been skiing up here since it opened in 1966 and to really have this moment is really, really special.”

Taken to event sites

The torch was taken to the ski jumps at Whistler Olympic Park, as test jumpers flew through the air and landed on packed snow. The flame also passed through the biathlon stadium and cross-country skiing areas of the park.

Melanie Whittal, a volunteer from the Vancouver-area city of Ladner who will be working at the park during the Olympics, said that for her, the torch’s arrival means the Olympics have already started.

“It’s the start of all the Games,” said Whittal, 48, who sells outdoor and ski equipment. “We’ve followed the journey of the torch all the way from the beginning. It’s exciting. It’s the fire!”

On Friday evening, the flame was carried on a snowmobile up Whistler Mountain, site of the alpine events.

At the top of the mountain, Canadian freestyle skier Julia Murray, whose late father, Dave Murray, was an original member of the famed Crazy Canuck downhill team, handed the flame over to another former Crazy Canuck, Steve Podborski.

Podborski, who won bronze at the 1980 Olympics and is a member of the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame, plotted to ski with the torch to a waiting celebration at the bottom of the slopes.

The Olympic flame was lit in Greece last October at a ceremony that used the rays of the sun and a special mirror to start the fire.

Since arriving in Victoria shortly after, organizers have staged the longest-ever domestic Olympic torch relay, passing through every province and territory and stretching as far north as the outpost of Alert, Nunavut.

The relay ends next Friday when the flame will light a cauldron at the opening ceremonies in Vancouver, setting off more than two weeks of Olympic competition.