Despite Bumpy Road, Hebert Finds Right Route to Success

After all the tumult of this season, look where Guy Hebert is.

Goals-against average: 2.91. Save percentage: .913.

That’s the magic combination for a goalie, a goals-against average under 3.00 and a save-percentage over .900.

Hebert also has a .500 record--22-22-4--and the Ducks still have a fighting chance to make the playoffs, meaning there’s a chance Hebert’s incentive-laden contract could pay dividends after all.

It hasn’t been a smooth ride, not by any stretch. Hebert has endured nagging injuries to his ankle and neck, and a more nagging crisis of Coach Ron Wilson’s confidence in him that resulted in two lengthy benchings in favor of Mikhail Shtalenkov.

Hebert rolled with it all in his characteristic manner--which was one of the reasons the Ducks thought he’d make a good expansion goalie in the first place. Now his shaky outings from earlier in the season are in the past, and Hebert has been at his best when the team needed him most.

He has given up more than two goals only once this month, and during the team’s record seven-game unbeaten streak, he had a 1.28 goals-against average and a .964 save percentage. His confidence is almost visible in his aggressiveness and quick lateral movements in the net.

“It’s like anything,” Hebert said. “You’re feeling good, things are going right, you seem to get the breaks and you end up making big saves. Maybe you’re a little more alert than usual because you’re so energized by the way things are going.”

That feeling--if he could bottle it, he would.

“You’re in that zone, or whatever you want to call it,” Hebert said. “Baseball players say the ball looks huge. A quarterback says he’s seeing the receiver’s hands. You’re playing with a lot of confidence.”

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Defenseman Bobby Dollas happened onto a philosophy for the playoff race while he was watching for scores on TV in his hotel room during the long trip that ends Sunday in San Jose.

“Something was the matter with my TV. You couldn’t see the bottom of the screen,” Dollas said. “All I could see was ‘Toronto 4,’ but I couldn’t see what Vancouver had. Or ‘Los Angeles 3,’ but I couldn’t tell how many goals Edmonton had. I didn’t want to stay up for SportsCenter, so I just went to sleep, because you know what, we shouldn’t worry about what the other teams are doing. If we win all our games, or a good percentage of them, it won’t matter.”

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The arrival of tough guy Ken Baumgartner hasn’t meant more fights involving the Ducks. It’s meant fewer.

That’s part of the idea--deterrence. Teams were coming after the Ducks when Todd Ewen was the only real physical presence, in part because they knew Ewen was treading lightly because his next game-misconduct penalty would trigger an automatic three-game NHL suspension.

In Baumgartner’s four games with the Ducks, he has been assessed 17 minutes in penalties and has one fight, with Chicago’s Cam Russell.

The idea is peace through strength, much like it used to be with Ewen and Stu Grimson, Wilson’s “twin missile silos.”

“[Baumgartner] is the toughest guy in the league--or one of the toughest,” Ewen said. “It’s also the time of year. You can’t get to the playoffs if you’re taking a bunch of stupid penalties.”

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When the Ducks are on the road, teams are taking advantage of the increased opportunity to match lines against Teemu Selanne and Paul Kariya, and it has showed.

Selanne doesn’t have a goal yet on the trip, with four assists in five games. Kariya has two goals--both against St. Louis--and three assists. That’s not bad, but it’s not the torrid pace they were on at home.

Selanne and Kariya have drawn the attention of a checking line and even had a defense pair assigned to them some games, leaving Wilson to wonder whether he should put the two on different lines to make it harder to check them.

The dilemma, of course, is whether it’s worth splitting up a unit that had been clicking so spectacularly.

Wilson tried it for a couple of shifts against Chicago, but abandoned the tactic.

“They started to complain. They want to play together,” Wilson said. “They feel like they’re still getting good chances.”

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A lot of people who know Kariya and saw the trick goal scored by Michigan’s Mike Legg in an NCAA tournament game last week were wondering if Kariya had tried the move.

Legg, standing behind the net, picked up the puck on the blade of his stick, then reached around and jammed it into the net with a flick of his wrists, almost like a lacrosse shot.

“I don’t think there’s enough time in the NHL to do that,” Kariya said, adding, “It takes a lot of guts to do that in a game.”

One trick shot Kariya has worked on occasionally is flipping the puck over the net from behind, then cutting in front of the net to try to swat it in.

“That’s been done in NHL games,” he said.