Win, Place, CuJo

Hockey is a team sport, but if there’s one player asked and expected to win games almost completely on his own, it’s the goaltender. Jean-Sebastien Giguere made the difference for the Mighty Ducks in the first round. For the Red Wings, Curtis Joseph did not.

“Giguere had no pressure whatsoever,” says former NHL goalie and current Hockey Night in Canada analyst Kelly Hrudey. “He’s going to feel it next year, and it’s going to become excruciating to him like it is to everybody else.”

Excruciating. Is there a better word to describe what Joseph went through? Is there any other way to describe the emotional pain he must have felt as he shook his head and slowly, very slowly, skated over to shake hands with the Ducks, who had just dispatched the defending champions in four games?

Joseph did not lose the series. Sure, he misplayed a puck in Game 3 that resulted in a goal, but he did not lose games with poor play. Joseph’s 2.08 goals-against average and .917 save percentage aren’t bad stats, and teams should win with such a performance. Still, Joseph went to Detroit to win the Cup just as Dominik Hasek had the season before him. Hasek finished last season’s playoffs with a 1.86 GAA and a .920 save percentage. The telling save percentages of the two aren’t all that different, but Hasek finished the job and Joseph did not.

Devil goalie Martin Brodeur has won two Stanley Cups but also has lost a few series in the first round, including last year’s to the Hurricanes. He knows how it feels to fail to meet expectations.

“Look at me last year; look at CuJo now,” Brodeur says. “You can look at it and say the teams didn’t score, but ... if you want to be the best, this is what you have to deal with. People look up to you to make that run.”

The very best make the difference. Joseph wanted to be the guy. He left Toronto with a farewell speech about the Maple Leafs not being committed to winning and Detroit being the home of the best chance to win the 2003 Stanley Cup. Nothing less would do. Not for Joseph. Not for the Wings. Certainly not for Wing fans.

“He put himself in a position to fail, and that’s really admirable,” Hrudey says.

The team failed him. He ultimately failed the team. The criticism wouldn’t be as bitter had he helped this team to the Cup finals and lost. That’s disappointment, not disgrace. Instead, he’s a first-round loser playing for a team with an unsettled future. Will Steve Yzerman play another season? What will happen with unrestricted free agents Sergei Fedorov, Darren McCarty and Igor Larionov? Will Luc Robitaille return? Whatever happens over the summer, it sure feels like the end of an era.

But Joseph will be there next season, still at the other side of the pointed finger, as well as in that middle ground among the NHL’s all-time great goaltenders. He is one of the game’s premier goalies, but can he be considered one of the rarified elite whose winning reputations remain for the ages? How much of a difference is there between the great ones who put up the numbers during the regular season and the ones who do that and win the Cup?

“There’s a difference, but it’s minimal,” Hrudey says. “That’s not to take anything away from the accomplishments of the guys who won. I’d never do that. But there are a number of truly great ones that haven’t. If Hasek hadn’t gone to Detroit, he wouldn’t have won the Cup, and he’d probably still be recognized as one of the best to ever play.”

Probably. But having won a Cup -- not to mention an Olympic gold medal (something Brodeur guided Canada to in 2002; Joseph was the backup) -- Hasek definitely will be remembered as one of the all-time greats.

Joseph, 35, is ninth in career wins. If he never wins a Stanley Cup, he will be remembered as one of the best of his time. But it’ll take a second or two before his name is mentioned. People always start with the men who still were standing at the end before they think of the others.

Hrudey says he does not think about Cup wins when he thinks about the greats.

“When I think of those guys, I think of (Bernie) Parent and (Billy) Smith,” Hrudey says. He pauses as he realizes he unintentionally proved a point. “And those are ones who won the Cup.” Parent and Smith won more than one Cup. The best ever -- the best who played on teams that had the opportunity to win -- got the job done. There is great accomplishment in being one of the top people in your profession. Joseph is that. But until and unless he guides a team to the Stanley Cup, he cannot be considered one of the truly elite -- a goaltender who got the job done night in and night out from October to March, then got better in April, May and June.