Joseph Feeling Pressure to Be the Dominator

After Detroit finished practice Sunday afternoon at the Arrowhead Pond, a group of Red Wings gathered around a television in the visiting locker room to watch the Masters.

It was a relaxing moment for the defending Stanley Cup champions, who head into tonight’s game against the Mighty Ducks down, 2-0, in their Western Conference best-of-seven, first-round series.

But not all of the Red Wings stayed to check out the golf. One of the players who left early was goaltender Curtis Joseph, who understandably has more on his mind than Canadian Mike Weir’s Masters playoff victory.

In his first season with Detroit, Joseph is feeling the heat after giving up two soft goals in the Mighty Ducks’ 3-2, come-from-behind victory Saturday in Game 2. Joseph has played under scrutiny since replacing Dominik Hasek, who retired after leading the Red Wings to the NHL title last season.

Detroit fans, who’ve been hard on Joseph all season, expect him to duplicate what Hasek did in the first round last season, when he helped the Red Wings win four in a row over Vancouver after losing the opening two games at home.

Duck General Manager Bryan Murray, who spent four years in Detroit as a general manager and coach, doesn’t believe it’s fair to Joseph, who has been outplayed by his counterpart on the Ducks, Jean-Sebastien Giguere.

“Any team that is expected to win, there’s added pressure on the goaltender,” Murray said, “and coming in after Dominik Hasek in that town, the expectations are different than they might be in a lot of circumstances.

“I think the fans have been pretty good in Detroit for the most part until the end of [Game 2] ... Expectations are difficult to manage. It always depends on the circumstances.”

For Joseph, the circumstances are pretty simple. Unless he picks up his game, the Red Wings will be facing a first-round upset, considering the way Giguere has dominated Detroit’s scorers.

Joseph cannot afford to give up goals as he did on Saturday when he allowed Stanislav Chistov to score from a bad angle; failed to cut off an angle on Jason Krog’s goal and then watched Steve Thomas score with a shot between his skates.

A year ago, the Red Wings did not play well as a team when they fell behind Vancouver. That isn’t the case in this playoff. As proof, the Red Wings point to the Ducks’ low number of scoring chances in the series.

“They had four or five [good] chances all game and they scored three goals,” Detroit center Igor Larionov said. “We just have to score. Then it’s a different story.”

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After being checked tightly by Detroit’s grind line of Kris Draper, Kirk Maltby and Darren McCarty for two games, the Ducks’ top goal scorer, Petr Sykora, is hoping to find more room to work tonight because the Ducks get to make final line changes with home-ice advantage.

“It should help us get the matchups that we want,” said Sykora, who’s scoreless in six shots on goal in the series. “They’ve been doing a good job of getting their checking line out there against us.”

But even if the Ducks are able to match Sykora against some of Detroit’s slower skaters, don’t expect him to take too many chances.

“They shut us down for two games, but that happens in the playoffs,” said Sykora, who played in numerous gritty playoff series with New Jersey before being acquired by Anaheim. “When you win a hockey game, it really doesn’t matter how. It’s a much different feeling than when you play up-and-down hockey and lose, 5-4. Then in two weeks, you’re home. This is the way we’ve played all year, and we started winning with this style. If you get away from your style of play [in the playoffs], it bites you back.

“I wouldn’t call how we’re playing ‘ugly hockey.’ I would call it ‘playoff hockey.’ ”

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Duck captain Paul Kariya on Giguere, who has a ridiculous .970 save percentage after making 100 stops in the first two games:

“He’s just been incredible, especially in Game 1 when he stole the game for us,” Kariya said. “But he’s been like that all year. He’s been a wall for us. Anytime that we’ve gotten into trouble, he’s been there with the big save.”