Little Things Add Up for Ducks’ Rucchin

Steve Rucchin wearily pulled a cap onto his sweat-matted hair and contemplated the end of a streak that had defined the Mighty Ducks as almost good enough to be taken seriously, but never quite deep enough or gritty enough to compete on equal footing with teams like the Detroit Red Wings.

After losing to the Red Wings eight consecutive times in the playoffs -- including losses in double overtime, triple overtime and single overtime in a 1997 four-game exit -- the Ducks defeated their nemesis Thursday night at Joe Louis Arena. In overtime, of course, a stunning 2-1 victory at 3:18 of the third extra session that silenced a standing-room-only crowd of 20,058 that considered the Ducks a mere appetizer on the way to another Red Wing Stanley Cup banquet.

“I’m sick and tired of these overtime games with Detroit in the playoffs,” said Rucchin, who won the faceoff that gave the Ducks possession of the puck on Paul Kariya’s decisive goal. “It took a little too long than we would have liked, but we did it.”

They did it because of Jean-Sebastien Giguere’s 63 saves, certainly. Cool of temperament, if not temperature, he withstood the exhausting tension of a 34-shot barrage in the first two overtimes. “Our goalie won it for us,” Rucchin said.

They also won it because of the persistence of Kariya, who played 34 minutes 41 seconds. And they couldn’t have done it without the stalwart defensive efforts of Keith Carney, who played a game-high 44:19, almost exactly twice the ice time he averaged during the season, and Niclas Havelid, who played 41:38.

But the glue that held them together Thursday was Rucchin.

Finally recovered from the badly broken leg and concussion that had limited him to 54 games the previous two seasons, Rucchin played all 82 games this season, a first. The Ducks set team records with 40 victories and 95 points, no coincidence.

“He’s been a leader on our team and we need him to be healthy for us to be successful,” Carney said. “He plays in all situations. He does everything this team needs to be successful, and he goes head-to-head with anybody.”

On Thursday, he went head-to-head with Sergei Fedorov, the elegant Russian forward who centered for Steve Yzerman and Brendan Shanahan on Detroit’s top line. “It’s a challenge,” Rucchin said. “He’s one of the best players in the world. It’s going to be impossible to shut a guy like that out. You just have to try to contain him as much as you can.

“He’s got speed, strength -- he’s got it all. It’s definitely going to be a great test.”

Rucchin passed that test Thursday.

He launched the play that led to the winning goal by winning a faceoff from Fedorov in the Detroit zone. “I was thinking, ‘Just get it to the net,’ ” Rucchin said. “That’s all we did.”

Somehow, the puck found the stick of Duck defenseman Havelid, whose hard shot never got through to goaltender Curtis Joseph. The puck bounced around the flailing arms and failing legs in front of the net. Fedorov thought it hit his skate.

“I just tried to cover my centerman,” Fedorov said, referring to Rucchin. “The next thing I know, the puck was in the net.”

It went in because the puck bounced to Kariya, who rifled a shot over the left shoulder of the off-balance goalie. “It was a nice rebound to the appropriate player,” Rucchin said

Kariya returned the compliment. “People don’t realize how good a player he is,” Kariya said. “He’s won us a lot of games this year.”

Their victory Thursday did much to banish the ghosts of all those overtime losses in 1997 and their dismissal by the Red Wings in four games in 1999. “It was a situation where it was us or them,” Rucchin said. “It’s nice to know the series is going to go longer than four games, like it has in the past.”

That must mean he doesn’t think the Ducks will sweep the Red Wings.

“I’m not making that prediction,” he said, laughing.

The Red Wings didn’t earn 110 points, 15 more than the Ducks, by being lucky. They’re swift, smart and resilient, and they have faced similar situations before with poise. They lost the first game of their first-round series against Vancouver last spring, also in overtime, and lost the second game before winning the next four. From there, they dispatched the Blues in five games, the Avalanche in seven and the Hurricanes in five in the Cup finals.

Rucchin knows the Ducks’ losing streak had ended but their fight had merely begun.

“Of course it’s nice to get a win, but you know, one game doesn’t really mean anything at this point,” he said. “It’s good to know we were able to steal a game, but we’re going to have to play better.”