Shtalenkov Hopes Ducks Don’t View Him as a Net Loss

Mikhail Shtalenkov has proved he can come through in games that count.

Now the question the Mighty Ducks have to ask themselves is, can they count on him to get them to the games that count?

Goaltender is one of the few areas where the Ducks have plenty of in-house options, and Shtalenkov hasn’t made it any easier for them to determine whom they will protect in the expansion draft this summer.

They expect Guy Hebert to fully recover from shoulder surgery before next season; the Ducks would have postponed surgery and taken their chances with Hebert at less than 100% if they qualified for the playoffs.

The Ducks own the rights to Patrick Lalime, a hot flash for Pittsburgh last season who is currently unsigned. And rookie Tom Askey looks more impressive each time out.

Only “experienced players” must be exposed in the expansion draft. Since Askey and Lalime have less than two years of NHL experience, the Ducks are not required to expose them.

That leaves Shtalenkov, who hasn’t exactly built a strong case for himself lately.

He has a 3.28 goals-against average this season. Of the regularly used goalies in the NHL, only Kirk McLean’s goals-against average is higher.

But how much does the regular season matter? The most important thing in hockey is to have a hot goaltender come playoff time, and none of the other Duck goalies has ever put forth such a great effort with so much on the line as Shtalenkov did against the Detroit Red Wings last May.

He came in for the injured Hebert in the third period of Game 2, and stopped 38 of 40 shots in a game the Ducks lost in triple overtime. Shtalenkov started the next game and stopped 44 of the 49 shots he faced in another loss, then turned away 70 shots in a 3-2 loss in double-overtime in Game 4, as the Red Wings completed one of the toughest sweeps in memory.

What are we to make of three games? “It’s not a lot,” Shtalenkov said. “But those games were real long.”

And significant. The playoffs are when you find out whether a goalie has what it takes.

Jim Carey of the Washington Capitals won the Vezina Trophy as the league’s top goaltender in the 1995-96 season, then crumbled against Pittsburgh in the playoffs, never regained his confidence and was traded the next season.

Shtalenkov did a better job of handling the pressure.

“I can’t say I like it or I don’t like it,” Shtalenkov said. “I just go with the game.”

That approach worked in the Olympics, when Shtalenkov went 4-1 for the silver medal-winning Russian team. His goals-against average of 1.65 trailed only Patrick Roy and the incomparable Dominik Hasek.

Shtalenkov shut out Edmonton in his first NHL game after the Olympic break, but then was blasted in a 6-2 loss to St. Louis and couldn’t keep the Ducks from sliding into a seven-game losing streak.

“That’s probably where we dug ourselves a hole,” Duck Coach Pierre Page said.

They were so deep that even a 4-2-1 trip couldn’t salvage their season.

Shtalenkov entered new territory for him, appearing in more than 30 games for the first time in his NHL career. Although he says the increased action makes him feel more comfortable, you have to wonder if fatigue kicked in when he gave up five goals in each of his last three games leading up to his 37th appearance Wednesday night against Colorado.

Like everyone else, he has not lived up to the promise shown last season.

“I’m trying to be more consistent,” he said. “The goalies were sometimes inconsistent. The whole team was.”

His future is unsure.

“I don’t know what to say,” he said. “Whatever happens.”

He remembers the special feeling of those playoff games, which makes this miserable season even more difficult. He’d better hope that the Ducks remember those long games last May too, and decide that a goalie who can get it done in those circumstances might be worth keeping around.