Ducks Ready to Tend to Business

By ELLIOTT TEAFORD

April 23, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

DETROIT —

Tom Askey rejoined his Cincinnati teammates in time for Game 1 of their American Hockey League playoff series against the Philadelphia Phantoms. He was expected to start in goal Thursday.

Dominic Roussel continued to battle flu, but he practiced for the first time in several days. Roussel is expected to be on the bench for Game 2 of the Mighty Ducks’ first-round Stanley Cup playoff series against the Detroit Red Wings tonight at Joe Louis Arena.

Guy Hebert also returned to the ice, feeling fine after getting kicked in the head by Detroit’s Brendan Shanahan midway through the Ducks’ 5-3 loss in Game 1 Wednesday. Hebert will start Game 2.

All is well again in the Duck goaltending corps.

“After all I’ve been through, it’s going to take a lot to keep me out,” Hebert said, referring to the groin injury that forced him from the Ducks’ second-round playoff series against Detroit in 1997. “There’s going to have to be wild horses dragging me away.”

Hebert reported no lingering headaches or dizziness Thursday after the kick in the head had sidelined him for the last 31 minutes 27 seconds Wednesday night. He said he never lost consciousness and insisted he didn’t feel all that bad after taking a few minutes to allow his head to clear.

“When I was down on the ice, there was only one question I couldn’t answer and that made [trainer Greg Smith] a little nervous,” Hebert said, cracking a smile. “When he asked me, ‘Do you know who you are?’ I said, ‘Batman.’

“Once I got in the dressing room and got my gear off, I felt better. I thought about going back into the game, but [Askey] was just getting settled into the game.”

Coach Craig Hartsburg said he never considered putting Hebert back in. Asked who would have filled in if Askey had been injured, Hartsburg joked, “[assistant] Newell Brown. He’s an old goalie.”

Hebert has not seen a replay of the collision and doesn’t care to. He remembers seeing Shanahan get tripped by Duck defenseman Ruslan Salei and watching a skate blade coming toward his face.

“I felt it reverberate all the way down my body,” he said of the kick.

Salei felt a bit guilty about flipping Shanahan so close to Hebert and tried to patch things up a bit with his goalie.

“Of course, I feel bad for it,” Salei said. “It was just accidental. I hope he feels pretty good now. I was talking to him [at practice] and I was asking him if he needed another wake-up call today, I can deliver it.”

Salei was joking, of course.

But he might think of a better way of neutralizing Shanahan tonight. After all, this wasn’t the first time Shanahan has done something in the playoffs that resulted in injury to Hebert.

Midway through the third period of Game 2 in 1997, Hebert injured his groin while making a save on Shanahan. Backup Mikhail Shtalenkov, now with the Phoenix Coyotes, went in at the 7:02 mark of the third period and stopped 38 of 40 shots in the Ducks’ 3-2 loss in triple overtime.

“I remember I was lying in the training room with my leg up and looking at a brick wall,” Hebert said. “I was able to follow the game by the crowd noise. If you don’t think a hockey game is loud, you should have been there. I knew it was over because it just got too loud.”

This time, Hebert was fit enough to walk around the dressing room. He did not watch the game on TV, but listened to the crowd again.

“From the oohs and ahs of the crowd and from what the guys said afterwards, Tom played a pretty good game,” Hebert said. “I felt horrible that he had to go in there that way. One good thing was that he had no time to think about anything.”

Askey made nine saves in his Stanley Cup playoff debut--not bad for a guy recalled from the minors that morning to serve as Roussel’s backup. But with Hebert cleared to play and Roussel well enough to practice, Askey returned to the minors Thursday.

“He’s gone back and he’s going to start [Game 1],” Hartsburg said of Askey, who played seven late-season games for the Ducks in 1997-98 but spent all of this season in the minors--until Wednesday, that is.

“We warmed him up for the AHL playoffs,” Hartsburg said.

To be sure, the Ducks are down by a game against the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Red Wings in the best-of-seven series. But you would hardly have guessed it Thursday.

The mood in the Duck dressing room was almost jovial after a 30-minute practice. Hebert seemed in particularly good spirits, entertaining reporters with a string of one-liners.

“I walked in here [after the injury] and I wasn’t sure who I was and some of the guys said, ‘Hey, you’re Dominik Hasek [the NHL’s most valuable player the last two seasons],’ ” Hebert said. “I called my wife and she said, ‘Do you know who you are?’ I said, ‘No.’ And she said, ‘Good, you’re normal.’ ”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

DETROIT vs. MIGHTY DUCKS

Red Wings lead best-of-seven series, 1-0

TODAY

At Detroit, 4:30 p.m., Channel 9

THURSDAY’S RESULTS

Philadelphia 3, Toronto, 0

New Jersey 3, Pittsburgh 1

Boston 2, Carolina 0

St. Louis 3, Phoenix 1

The Schedule Best of Seven

MIGHTY DUCKS vs. DETROIT