Goalie Takes Teammates on Unforgettable Ride

By the time the Mighty Ducks’ triple-overtime victory over the Detroit Wings in the opening game of the playoffs ended, it was 11:30 p.m.

Goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere, the only Duck on the ice for the entire 103 minutes and 18 seconds, kept going.

He did individual interviews for American and Canadian television networks. He spent another 20 minutes dealing with reporters in the locker room. By then it was midnight, and he was still looking at close to an hour of therapy and treatment, including intravenous fluids.

He told his teammates that they could take the team bus back to the hotel and he’d catch a cab later. The other players -- particularly Steve Rucchin and Paul Kariya -- weren’t having it. When he was finished, they said, the bus would be waiting for him.

Ten to 15 minutes after the rest of the traveling party was seated, Giguere finally arrived.

“I was taking a long time,” Giguere said. “You’ve got to get the massage and stretch and all that. I didn’t mind taking a cab. It was nice of them to wait.”

Yeah, well, it was nice of him to stop 63 shots that night.

Giguere has done more than earn a place on the bus. He has driven the Ducks to an improbable three-games-to-none lead over the Red Wings.

He has stopped 133 of the 137 shots fired at him in the series, a .971 save percentage. Against a Detroit team that seems to have a Hall-of-Fame player on each shift, Giguere has been the best player on the ice.

Sure, he had a solid regular season that included a shutout streak of 237 minutes. Even with all of that, did anyone have a right to expect him to do this in his playoff debut?

“There was never a doubt in my mind,” Kariya said. “There’s a reason why you have success. He’s worked very hard to get into this position, and he’s reaping the benefits of it now.”

So are the Ducks. Thanks to the guy they call “Jiggy”, they no longer fear the Red Wings. There’s still respect for them, but no awe. Detroit outplayed the Ducks in the first two games, outshooting them, 100-67, but had nothing to show for it because of Giguere. In Game 3 Monday night, the Ducks were even with the Red Wings. They matched every Detroit surge. And once again, the difference was Giguere, who made 36 saves in a 2-1 victory.

“We have all the confidence in the world in him,” defenseman Keith Carney said. “We know we can go out and play and not worry about making a mistake. We know that he’s going to be there for us.”

By now, the Red Wings are all too aware that Jiggy’s there. They have thrown everything they have at him and he’s still standing tall.

After Giguere stopped Brett Hull on a breakaway in the first period Monday, Hull gave Giguere a little tap on his pads with his stick as he skated back down the ice. It appeared to be equal parts frustration and admiration.

“I’m not sure what he meant by that,” Giguere said. “Maybe just, ‘Keep it up.’ That’s fine. I’ll keep it up.”

Giguere is enjoying himself. The laughs come easily and often. Some players dutifully take a quick turn on the ice when they’re announced as the game’s first star, but Giguere savored it Monday night.

After both the pressure-packed Game 1 and the tense final six minutes of Game 3, he said he’d had fun.

“These are the games [when] you learn,” Giguere said. “The tight game, one-goal game, at the end of the third, when there’s a lot of pressure on the team and all that. These are the games when you learn the most and you have the most fun.

“It’s just experience. It’s something that nobody can take away from me now. It’s something that I went through and it’s just something that I have in my bag now.”

He doesn’t come up big, he plays big, using all of his 6-foot-1 frame. Like so many other goaltenders who come from Quebec, the Montreal native employs the same butterfly technique popularized by Patrick Roy. He honed his skills at the Cojean Hockey School run by Francois Allaire, the Ducks’ goaltending consultant.

Giguere recently joked with Allaire that when he first went to the school as a 12-year-old, Allaire didn’t know him. There were a lot of kids at the school, Allaire explained.

“After a couple of years, when the guy turned 14 or 15, you can see the guys who are going to be real good,” Allaire said. “After that, yeah, I could really see him on the ice. That was no problem for me.

“We put the kids at the same age together. There was some superstar every year who would come and impress you. Jiggy was one of them. His work ethic was good. He hasn’t changed too much since. He still wants to stop the puck, still wants to work hard.”

Giguere limits his game to stopping pucks, one of the reasons he is so effective.

Whenever players start to mix it up in front of his net, he skates out to the boards.

“My job is to make some saves,” he said. “That’s all I’m focusing on right now.”

And one area in which he’s notably different from his hero, Roy, is that he doesn’t waste much time handling the puck.

“I find the glass very ... not goalie-friendly,” Giguere said. “I just prefer letting my ‘D’ take care of it, because when you make a mistake, you’re not in the net. So I try to be as simple as possible.”

Fortunately for the Ducks and for Giguere, who constantly credits Allaire, his mentor decided to stick around last summer, after other teams inquired about his services.

“Last year, we could start to see some really good information about Jiggy,” Allaire said. “It’s good to work with those guys long-term. Developing a goaltender at that level takes time. I’ve been lucky to work with the same guy in Montreal for 12 years: Patrick.

“It’s really a challenge to do that. If I can repeat it somewhere, that’s good. I think I have the chance here.”

As the Ducks have learned, when Giguere’s on your side, you always have a chance.

J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com.