THANK YOU, MASKED MAN : It’s a Between-the-Pipes Dream as Hebert Starts Ducks’ First Playoff Game Tonight

This is what Guy Hebert has waited for.

It’s what he has been conked on the head for, sprained his neck for, darn-near worn out his mind and body for.

He has iced every joint and guzzled gallons of Gatorade, and his time has arrived.

Hebert was the Original Duck, and he’ll be in goal for the first playoff game in Mighty Duck history tonight at the Pond against the Phoenix Coyotes--just as he has for 217 of the 296 games in Duck history.

The speed of Teemu Selanne and Paul Kariya, who finished second and third in the NHL

scoring race, will be on display in the best-of-seven Western Conference quarterfinal series, along with the power game of the Coyotes’ Keith Tkachuk, the league’s leading goal-scorer.

But it could be the goalies--Hebert and the Coyotes’ Nikolai Khabibulin--who decide it.

At 30, Hebert is finally starting a Stanley Cup playoff game.

He’s only waited most of his life.

“Ever since I was a kid rolling around in the street trying to stop shots against my brother,” he said. “That’s why you play.

“In college, I’d throw my books in the library, run and watch the games on TV in the campus center, then go back to studying,” he said. “I’ve been watching faithfully for years. It will be nice to be in there.”

Until now, Hebert’s playoff experience consisted of a pressure-cooker three-minute stint in overtime in relief of St. Louis goalie Curtis Joseph during a 1993 playoff game against Toronto.

Hebert was as comfy as any spectator watching the game from the backup’s perch at Maple Leaf Gardens--until Joseph was kicked in the throat and had to leave the game with its outcome dangling in sudden death.

“I’m sitting there eating popcorn next to a kid,” Hebert said. “The ref came over and said, ‘I’m sorry, but you’ve got to go in.’ ”

Hebert did, made one terrific game-saving stop on Nikolai Borschevsky before Joseph returned, then left to a standing ovation from the crowd.

Since then, nothing.

Standing between the pipes for a brand-new hockey team is one of the worst job descriptions in sports, but Hebert has more than survived, he has thrived.

He has a career goals-against average under 3.00 and has finished among the NHL’s top five in save percentage the past two years.

But because his season was always over by mid-April, he has never quite cracked people’s mental list of the league’s best goalies.

“More so for a goalie than anybody else, your reputation is made in the playoffs,” Duck Coach Ron Wilson said. “Guy’s got an opportunity to play more games on national TV and show his skills off. Usually we’re just the last highlight on ESPN, or maybe just a score. And to see the last recap, you might have to be up at 3 in the morning. Now with doubleheaders, he’ll be playing early.

“To be considered one of the elite goalies, your team has to do well in the playoffs and you have to be consistent for three or four years. Some goalies have a great three or four months. A lot have a great first year, and you never hear from them again. Guy’s past that.

“[But] the top, elite goalies have won a Stanley Cup. You’ll never get the credit you might have until you win.”

At the other end of the ice tonight will be Khabibulin, a 24-year-old Russian who had three shutouts in a row this season, and finished the season with 42 consecutive starts, making him the Coyotes’ ironman.

Hebert was much the same for the Ducks, starting 42 of 43 games in one stretch. With tremendous playoff-race pressure on him as the Ducks tried to scramble into position, he had a 1.85 goals-against average and a .946 save percentage during their 12-game unbeaten streak.

It finally caught up with him in Edmonton on March 23, when he turned weak, shaky and hyperventilated, leaving the game with what turned out to be a case of exhaustion. Two losses later, with Hebert recuperating and Selanne also out of the lineup because of a strained muscle near his rib cage, Wilson admits he was stricken with doubt.

“I was asking myself, ‘Have you played Paul and Teemu too much? Have you killed Guy Hebert?’ ”

Hebert sat out four of the final seven games, resting and sharpening his game with the Ducks’ goaltending consultant, Francois Allaire.

Even though he absorbed one final blow this season when somebody barreled into him in the final seconds of the final game against San Jose and he skated off unsteadily with a sore neck, he says he is ready.

“If you’re not ready for the playoffs, you’ll never be ready,” Hebert said. “I think the excitement of everything will get me jacked up. It’s a whole new season.”

As for that worn-down body. . . .

“I don’t think there’s a miracle cure for fatigue,” Hebert said. “But I’ve gotten back to where my mind and body react at the same time again. Before, my mind was reacting but my body didn’t follow.”

Mikhail Shtalenkov might have saved the Ducks’ season with his yeoman’s work on short notice, but make no mistake about it. In the playoffs, Guy is the guy.

“You go with the guy who has played the most and then you go with him as long as you possibly can,” Allaire said. “The most games there can be in a series is seven. Because it’s such a short time--a minimum of eight days, a maximum of 14, most teams go with that one guy. You know, 14 days, and that might be it.

“Injuries are the only time you make a change. Basically, you go with the same guy all the way through the playoffs.”

Even in Detroit, where Chris Osgood and Mike Vernon have both played often and well, everyone is waiting to see which one will get the playoff nod.

“You’ve seen different situations like Jim Carey in Washington struggling last season, then Olaf Kolzig came in,” Hebert said. “But you usually go with one goalie. It’s been like that since I can remember. You go with a guy, and ride him as far as you can.

“It looks like it’s my turn to show people what I can do.”

Since being hired this year, Allaire has helped Hebert with his approach to the game, urging him to make efficient moves and to try to stop the puck with his positioning, not a spectacular, energy-draining dive.

Allaire is a particular asset in the postseason because he worked many years in Montreal with Patrick Roy, who won his third Stanley Cup last season with Colorado and is considered the game’s best postseason goalie.

“One of the things about Patrick is in the last game of the playoffs last season, even in overtime, he was playing the same way as he was at the beginning of the playoffs,” Allaire said. “It’s like a 100-meter runner. It’s not the guy who accelerates at the end, it’s the guy who goes 10 seconds hardest without ever slowing down.”

If perseverance is what’s required, Hebert has it. An expansion team’s goalie has to.

“For all of us here the first four years, you’d hear about a four-year plan, a three-year plan, no plan. There have been a lot of changes,” Hebert said.

“I’m hoping this is the midway point, and a new era for the Mighty Ducks is starting. I’m glad to still be a part of it after being there at the beginning of it.”

There have been rough patches, especially during a tumultuous stretch last season. Wilson never saw it as more than a disagreement about performance. But Hebert, a laid-back sort, was turned inside-out by Wilson’s public criticism.

“It’s like a quarterback and his coach, there’s the same kind of parallel,” Hebert said. “Both guys are learning the best they can. One guy does it off the ice. One does it on the ice.

“I think we’ve both grown over four years. He’s made me a better goaltender, a better person. I hope, in some small way, I might have helped him become a better coach, even a better person.”

Wilson calls coaching the Ducks “a learning experience,” but doesn’t think he erred in his handling of Hebert.

“I think Guy’s grown up a lot. I think that’s the big difference,” Wilson said. “He wanted to be a No. 1 goalie. But just wanting to be a No. 1 goalie isn’t enough. He’s learned you have to work hard and take the time to do that.”

Hebert doesn’t find it hard to say he has changed.

“There are things I’ve learned that you can adapt in life as well as in hockey, whether it’s hearing criticism or not facing the music,” he said.

“You take real life, sometimes the truth hurts. You take a long look at yourself, and you see you’re not doing the job you’re capable of. So you shape up. It makes you a stronger person. You learn perseverance, and you might learn some things off the ice, even if my wife criticizes my cooking or whatever.”

There’s no time for Hebert to work his Cajun magic on the barbecue now. No time for his passion for fly-fishing. (He was fishing one summer afternoon in 1993 when the Ducks made him their first pick in the expansion draft, arriving home to his brother’s blunt announcement: “You’re a Duck.”)

He was fishing in the Florida keys last spring when he heard the news about the Panthers--the Ducks’ expansion twins--and their remarkable playoff run.

“I was thinking. Maybe next year it will be reversed,” Hebert said.

This season, he walked out of the Pond after the final regular-season game with a couple of sleeves of golf balls.

For once, it isn’t tee-time yet.

“I’ll put ‘em with my fly-fishing stuff,” Hebert said. “I’ll need ‘em in what . . . a couple of months?”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

NHL PLAYOFFS

Mighty Ducks (36-33-13) vs. Phoenix Coyotes (38-37-7) At Pond of Anaheim

TV: Fox Sports West, Fox Sports West 2, 7:30 p.m.

Radio: KEZY-FM (95.9)