Ducks, Their Fans Deserve This

Time passed too slowly for Jack Ferreira Tuesday afternoon, eating the minutes before the Mighty Ducks’ game against the Chicago Blackhawks in painfully small nibbles.

“All day [Tuesday], I couldn’t wait for the game to start,” said Ferreira, the Ducks’ general manager. “At lunch time I drove over to Disneyland and went around the back and went in and walked around for two hours. I just looked in the shops, bought some ties.”

His stroll took him through Adventureland and Frontierland, but he skipped Fantasyland. Why bother? He had no reason to escape to that haven of make-believe, not with reality being so pleasant for him and his team these days.

With a 3-3 tie Tuesday at the Pond, the Ducks edged closer to their first playoff spot in the Western Conference. It has been a long time coming, a wait made more galling when the Florida Panthers--the Ducks’ expansion twin--made it to the Stanley Cup finals last spring.

They haven’t mathematically clinched a playoff berth, although they have wedged a six-point cushion between them and disaster, also known as ninth place. “I’ll feel more comfortable when I see that little ‘x’ or ‘y’ next to our name,” assistant GM David McNab said, referring to the symbols used in the standings to denote teams that have clinched playoff spots or division titles.

Still, they very well may have clinched a berth psychologically last week, when they found the physical and mental toughness to carve out a grueling victory at Chicago and a nerve-racking, playoff-tight overtime triumph at Detroit. Those two gutsy performances enabled them to end their trip with a 3-3 record despite missing Teemu Selanne for four games and Guy Hebert for three, indications their resources may extend beyond Selanne, Hebert and Paul Kariya.

“You can’t rely on anybody helping you,” Ferreira said. “You’ve got to do it yourself.”

They helped themselves immensely Tuesday with a rugged effort against the Blackhawks, who are desperately trying to keep a toehold among the top eight in the West.

Although the emotional edge the Ducks carried into the game had dulled by the second period, they had the resilience to pull even with 11:17 left in the third period on a power-play goal by Steve Rucchin, after a wide-open Selanne couldn’t convert a chance to the right of Chicago goaltender Jeff Hackett.

Even Ferreira, who generally is so tense during games that club employees know to avoid even catching his eye, was nearly jovial during the game. “This is the fun time,” he said.

He’s right. This is why you play 82 games, to get to the playoffs and give yourself a chance, no matter how small, at living out the dreams you dreamed in your backyard or your neighborhood rink.

Nothing in sports is more enjoyable than playoff hockey, especially when those games go to overtime and the balance of a series or a season can shift with one dramatic stroke. And it’s about time hockey fans in the Southland got to see it, whether for the first time or for the first time since the Kings’ improbable trip to the Stanley Cup finals four years ago.

We who watched Robin Bawa deserve it.

We who watched the Ducks in their first seasons implement a dump-and-chase offense only to forget the chase part, we deserve it.

We who watched, through fingers covering our eyes, as Sean Hill, Tom Kurvers and Bill Houlder impersonated NHL defensemen, we deserve it. We who watched Kariya carry the offense--and on many nights that second season and into the third watched Kariya be the offense--we deserve it.

We have suffered through enough clutch-and-grab festivals, fire-diving mascots and inane trivia contests to be rewarded with the chance to see playoff hockey and experience the exquisite tension that makes it unique.

Tuesday’s game was like a playoff game for both teams. Centers made desperate dives to take their men out of plays after losing faceoffs and defensemen threw their bodies at shots they might otherwise let go by. And like a playoff game, this game was almost decided by one mistake, when Chicago defenseman Chris Chelios committed a rare giveaway in his own zone and Duck center Sean Pronger pounced on the puck. Pronger whipped a shot that was gobbled up by Hackett with 3:17 to play, drawing gasps from the fans.

Two weeks from today, the playoffs will begin. If the Ducks continue to show heart and tenacity, they won’t have to talk about games that were like playoff games. They will be in playoff games. No trips to Fantasyland necessary, ever again.