Ducks Looking for Gig to Be Up

A goalie makes his reputation in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

The Mighty Ducks’ Jean-Sebastien Giguere takes that knowledge, with child-like innocence, into Thursday’s playoff opener in Detroit. This is a first-time experience for him, but he has seen how he would like it to play out.

Giguere, was a 9-year old wisp of a goalie back in 1986, with a dislike for the Montreal Canadiens, an opinion a bit sacrilegious in the Montreal neighborhood where he lived. But even with such heresy in his nature, Giguere was fascinated watching a rookie goalie take the Canadiens to the Stanley Cup championship.

Patrick Roy, then 18, with only 46 regular-season NHL games on his resume, smothered one team after another in the playoffs, winning his first Conn Smythe Trophy in the process.

“Right there and then, he became a star,” Giguere said. “After that, there was no doubt who every goalie wanted to be. Every kid wanted to play his style. Every kid pretended to be him playing pickup games. It was amazing. That’s what the playoffs can do for you.”

Giguere has no illusions about starry-eyed 9-year-olds hollering, “I get to be Giguere!” at some Montreal hockey rink this summer. But he knows this is where his path was leading from the time he was 5 and volunteered to be goalie because, “I liked the equipment.”

On Thursday, Giguere starts his final exam, one that a chosen few have passed and so many have failed. He has already graded out as one of the bright young goalies in the NHL ... during the regular season. The curriculum gets a little tougher now, as he faces the defending champion Red Wings.

Giguere is ready with an adult-like response.

“I think it doesn’t matter what the outcome will be,” Giguere said. “I know I’ll be a better player at the end of this, just to have that playoff experience. I have never been through it. I know the intensity is going to be great.

“Being the goalie in the playoffs is the big part of the game. But I believe you win as 20 guys. One guy can’t win it by himself. If you want to have a chance to go anywhere, you have to do it as a team, everyone showing up every game.”

That said, there is still a 9-year kid inside that pops out occasionally.

“If you look at the last 10 years and who won the Stanley Cup, it is always a good goalie in net,” Giguere said with a little more eagerness in his voice. “Patrick Roy, Martin Brodeur, Dominik Hasek, Ed Belfour. It goes on and on.”

For the Ducks to go on and on, they will need, as the saying goes, “to get Jiggy wid it.”

Giguere may be stolen goods -- the Ducks lifted him from Calgary for a second-round draft pick in the summer of 2000 -- but he’s proof that crime does pay.

He was fifth in the NHL with a 2.11 goals-against average and tied for fifth with a .920 save-percentage while playing for a mediocre Duck team in 2001-02. After a slow start, he has similar numbers this season, a 2.30 goals-against average and .920 save-percentage.

He posted a dramatic shutout streak just as the Ducks were trying to legitimize their standing as a playoff contender. Giguere did not give up a goal for 237 minutes 7 seconds, the third-longest streak in NHL history, which seemed to fulfill his destiny as a child prodigy. At 18, he was drafted 13th overall by the Hartford Whalers, now the Carolina Hurricanes.

“It always gives you confidence when you know the guy back there is going to play big,” center Steve Rucchin said. “He has such an even disposition. There have been only a couple times that he’s broken his stick on the cross-bar after giving up a goal and one of those was after a penalty shot. That is the demeanor you need in playoff games.

“Your goalie plays great for four games, you win. If you steal a game, that’s one less he has to win for you.”

Giguere, with his always-in-position style, his even temperament and, especially, his think-before-I-act emotional stability, seems well suited to becoming a successful playoff goalie. In fact, he could almost have been computer generated for that role.

He had a hefty 2.45 goals-against average the first month of the season, and his record was 2-4-2. Yet what did not destroy him only made him stronger.

Giguere finished with 34 victories, tied for fifth in the NHL, and eight shutouts. Only Brodeur, with nine, had more.

All of which Giguere accomplished with a brown-bag approach.

“I wouldn’t be good goalie if I was flashy,” Giguere said. “I don’t have the reflexes of [Curtis Joseph]. I don’t think I’m athletic enough to flop on my back like Dominik [Hasek]. I think the best way for me is to play as simple as possible. The same answer to the same play.”

He has had the right answers lately. Giguere begins the playoffs at the top of his game. He has a 1.95 goals-against average and a .931 save percentage in his last 14 games.

“Obviously, he is physically really sound,” Coach Mike Babcock said. “Mentally, he is so competitive. There are a lot of guys who are good physically. The difference is, the good players are mentally tougher.”

The weeding out starts now. Goalies become princes or paupers in the playoffs. Roy and Brodeur are held in reverence for their playoff exploits. Detroit’s Joseph remains suspect, his body of work incomplete without a Stanley Cup championship.

“For the last few years, I have been getting ready for this,” Giguere said. “Doing drills, spending time after practice to get ready for this part of the season. I feel I’m ready for the job.”

Ready or not, here it comes.

“Right now, what you do individually doesn’t count,” Giguere said. “I don’t care if we win every game 8-7. It’s about getting four wins in a series.”

And that would be reputation enough for Giguere.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

MIGHTY DUCKS vs. DETROIT

*--* Best of seven (all times Pacific) Game 1: Thursday at Detroit, 4 p.m., FSN2 Game 2: Saturday at Detroit, noon, Ch. 7 Game 3: Monday at Ducks, 7:30, FSN Game 4: April 16 at Ducks, 7:30, FSN *Game 5: April 19 at Detroit, noon, Ch. 7 *Game 6: April 20 at Ducks, 7, Ch. 9 *Game 7: April 22 at Detroit, 4, FSN

*if necessary

*--*