Doing the Dirty Work : Kariya, Selanne in Limelight, but Know They Won’t Win Cup Without Team Effort

A one-line team?

Well . . . yes.

But the players you rarely hear about--Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne’s supporting cast--could play crucial roles during the playoffs.

“Great players can be neutralized,” Duck Coach Ron Wilson said. “The difference sometimes is the second, third, even fourth line. There’s always an unsung hero who steps up in the playoffs.

“The year the Rangers won the Cup, it was Stephane Matteau. When Montreal won, it was John LeClair, and back then he was a no-name. Colorado, I’d have to look, maybe Scott Young. For us, it might be a Joe Sacco or a Brian Bellows who steps forward when Paul and Teemu are neutralized.

“Who knows on this team who’s going to come through? It’s a different season. Somebody can make a career out of coming through in the playoffs.”

Somebody might have to--that’s one worry for the Ducks.

But one of the reasons they have clicked as a team is because the stardom of Kariya and Selanne doesn’t rankle the rank and file.

“They’re at the top of their profession,” Sacco said. “They’re No. 2 and No. 3 in scoring in the league. We count on them, and what they give to us, just about every night.

“You hear different things about [our] ‘one-line team.’ I don’t think that’s true. It’s just our roles. We know if we do our jobs, those guys are going to score. If we just play well defensively, it should be obvious what’s going to happen.”

As for recognition?

“It really doesn’t matter,” Sacco said. “It’s never mattered to me, and I don’t think it does to a lot of guys here. With Paul and Teemu, if everybody else does their job, we’ll win hockey games.”

Steve Rucchin--if he’s healthy--could be the captain of the unsung heroes. With 67 points, he would have led four other NHL teams in scoring this season and been tied for the lead on two more.

Defenseman Dmitri Mironov’s 52 points ranked sixth among NHL defensemen. Maybe more important, he played a big role for Toronto in the 1993 playoffs, with six goals and 15 points in 18 games. Another defenseman, J.J. Daigneault, has enlivened the power play.

Then there are all the chip-one-in guys, the players who have 10 or 15 goals. Bellows has 16, Mironov has 13, Sacco has 12, Warren Rychel has 10, Ted Drury has nine and rookie Sean Pronger has seven in less than half a season.

The Ducks don’t need all those players to score every night--just one of them.

Don’t forget backup goalie Mikhail Shtalenkov, who waits his turn patiently and performed so brilliantly when his team needed him most after Guy Hebert nearly collapsed because of exhaustion.

“I think we’re underrated as a team,” Hebert said. “Besides Paul and Teemu, there are 17, 18, 19 other contributors every night. Paul and Teemu get the limelight and they deserve it. It enables the rest of the team to stay behind the scenes and do the other work.”

Kariya agreed.

“Everybody contributes,” he said. “Brian Bellows. Joe Sacco. Dan Trebil has been unbelievable. Dave Karpa. Everybody has to do their job. Ours are more high profile. You see the end product. But it might be because of a blocked shot, a pass up the ice, a dump-in, a line change, and then we score.

“All the little things that go on behind the scenes allow us to do what we do.”

Sacco has gone from a front-line player, scoring 19 goals the Ducks’ first year, to more of a behind-the-scenes guy. He struggled before figuring out the team wanted him to play defense first, score second.

“You look at teams that are successful, that’s part of what makes them successful,” Sacco said. “There are pretty defined roles, and people put aside personal goals for the sake of the team.

“Look at Jari Kurri. He could have been more vocal about his ice time, or taken more shots. That’s why we’ve been successful. People put personal goals aside. It helps everybody, whatever you want to do down the road, whether it’s get another contract, go to another team, whatever.”

In the end, the team does belong to Kariya, Selanne and Hebert. One or two others might get to share the limelight.

“No one makes a greater contribution than Guy, Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne,” Wilson said. “But everybody quietly gets their job done, and that’s what allows them to shine. There are two ends of the rink. Paul and Teemu finish at one end, and Guy makes the big save at the other. But all the guys in the middle set up what happens at each end.

“A couple of guys get a lot of credit, but they wouldn’t be successful if we didn’t have a solid team of unselfish guys behind them.”