Ducks Better Late Than Ever

At the scene of so many Mighty Duck nightmares came a moment Paul Kariya has dreamed about, in a game goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere wasn’t sure would ever end.

Kariya was mobbed by teammates after his flick-of-the-wrist goal 3 minutes 18 seconds into the third overtime gave the Ducks a 2-1 victory over the defending Stanley Cup champion Detroit Red Wings on Thursday night in Game 1 of a first-round NHL playoff series before 20,058 at Joe Louis Arena.

Giguere just shuffled off the ice to use his self-appointed timetable to enjoy a record-setting performance.

“I was happy it was over and obviously happy we won,” said Giguere, who stopped 63 of 64 shots and was more a target than a goalie in the first overtime. “I can think about this one until midnight and then it’s time to focus on the next game.”

The time was 11:46 p.m. in Detroit. Giguere had a lot to review in those 14 minutes.

It ended when Steve Rucchin won a faceoff in the Red Wing zone and Niclas Havelid got off a shot from the blue line that hit Sergei Fedorov’s skate and drifted straight to Kariya. With a surgeon-like touch, Kariya brought the puck from his backhand to his forehand and flicked it past goalie Curtis Joseph to end the longest game in Duck history, surpassing a 3-2 overtime loss to Detroit in the 1997 playoffs.

“That was the kind of moment you think about as a kid,” said Kariya, who had only one goal in the last 18 regular-season games. “That was a nice feeling, but the game belonged to Jiggy.”

This victory will do more good for the Ducks than damage to the Red Wings, who lost the first two games to Vancouver in the first round last season and won the series in six games. For the Ducks, it was too good an opportunity to let get away.

“We needed to win that game,” defenseman Keith Carney said. “The way Jigger played, we had to win that game for him.”

There had been plenty of talk the past few days about how Giguere would handle the pressure of facing the Red Wings in the playoffs. The question now may be, how are the Red Wings going to handle Giguere?

The 63 saves were the most by a goalie in his first playoff game. It was the second-most saves by a Duck goalie. Mikhail Shtalenkov made 70 saves in that 3-2 loss to Detroit in triple overtime on May 4, 1997.

Giguere had to be hooked up to an IV after the game, but only after he had taken the Ducks off life support. They were swept out of the playoffs by the Red Wings in 1997 and 1999 and have been tortured at Joe Louis Arena, where they have won only three times in 23 games.

“I tried to drink a lot of liquids between [overtime] periods and I was sitting by the fan trying to cool off because it was getting kind of hot out there,” Giguere said. “These games are going to get harder and harder; that is why it was nice to get this one. There’s a lot more to come.”

The Ducks were outshot, 20-4, in the first overtime and Giguere got at least a piece of each one. The 20 shots were the most a goalie has faced in a playoff overtime since the expansion season of 1967-68.

“We had some golden, golden chances,” Fedorov said.

Yet it was Giguere who had the Midas touch.

He gave up only a power-play goal by Brendan Shanahan 4:15 into the game.

In the first overtime, he survived a fluke deflection, when an Igor Larionov cross-ice pass went off Duck center Adam Oates, forcing Giguere to change directions in the crease and make a pad save.

He endured a Red Wing power play, where Larionov had a point-blank opportunity on a rebound. Giguere managed to reach to his left and get enough of the puck with his glove to deflect it over the net.

He even survived Luc Robitaille’s apparent game-winner 9:21 into the first overtime, which was overturned when replays clearly showed the puck hit the crossbar.