Thomas Is Playing Great Game of Stump the Hockey Experts

This time next week, the name might be changed, this most famous of trophies stolen by a fire hydrant of a man with dark circles under his eyes, scars on his cheeks and magic in his skates.

The Stumpy Cup.

That’s what the Mighty Ducks call Steve Thomas, Stumpy, shouting this perfect nickname as they cling to his tattered sweater while he drags them around the rink for one last bumpy, beautiful ride.

Stumpy pushes them. Stumpy prods them. Then there are nights like Monday, when the season has slipped into overtime, when the pressure builds like a playoff beard, when the old man is on the ice with no points in nearly a month.

When Stumpy stumps them.

Flips a pass into Sandis Ozolinsh in front of the Devil net. Hangs around the zone like a 19-year veteran. Catches the rebound of a Samuel Pahlsson shot. Knocks it past Marty Brodeur to give the Ducks a 1-0 win in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

“Stump always tells the guys ... ‘This is your time, let’s get her done in a hurry,’ ” Duck Coach Mike Babcock said.

And when the guys don’t listen, when they hit two posts and miss several other opportunities and risk losing a game they dominated and a championship they believe they can win?

Stumpy does it himself, dad-gummit, flipping the puck in the net just 39 seconds into overtime, then spreading his arms in a sense of wonder felt by all of Orange County as the series is tied at two games apiece.

A former cartoon team is now playing a best-of-three series for the sports world’s most prestigious piece of hardware.

While Stumpy’s skin is turning red.

“I’ve got to pinch myself every time in that locker room,” he said.

An entire community is beginning to pinch with him. After seemingly losing the Cup last week in New Jersey, the Ducks have spent the last two games at the Pond showing they can win it.

Doing it not with the pretty faces of past Duck triumphs, but with tough faceoffs and hard forechecks and fight.

Looking like Stumpy.

“He’s in your face, he’s on the puck, he’s tenacious, he’s hard,” Babcock said.

And less than three months ago, he was a cliche, just another 39-year-old guy who could have starred in “Slap Shot,” a weathered veteran racking up more scars than points while playing for a lousy team.

Then, one March day, that team, the Chicago Blackhawks, was flying to Southern California to play the contending Ducks.

As the plane was landing, he was told he had been traded to the Ducks.

A guy plays 1,191 games without winning a Stanley Cup, and suddenly he’s back in the playoffs? Talk about your Disneyland. Happy and Sneezy, meet Stumpy.

“You can look at him and tell, he wants it so bad,” teammate Mike Leclerc said.

You could see it throughout a career in which he has scored an NHL regular-season record 13 overtime goals.

“I get the feeling that I want to make a difference ... I don’t know what it is,” he said. “I just feel it inside that I want to be that guy.”

You could see it during the end of the regular season, when he scored 10 goals in 12 games after scoring only four times in 69 games with Chicago.

Nothing like playing on a line with young and younger, 20-year-old Stanislav Chistov and 25-year-old Pahlsson.

“We complement each other well,” he said with a grin.

You could even see it earlier Monday, with 3:43 remaining in regulation, when Stumpy drew a 17,174-person standing ovation without ever shooting the puck.

During one sequence at center ice, he chased down one Devil, then another Devil, then another Devil, harassing them from board to board until the fans erupted with appreciation.

“He’s a greasy, greasy guy,” said Babcock, his ultimate compliment.

When told this, Thomas smiled.

“It’s dirt,” he said.

If so, then that dirt coats a work ethic that has become this team’s work ethic, his leathery expression becoming that of a team that once looked like a smooth combination of Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne -- and lost.

When asked what Stumpy brought to the team, Jean-Sebastien Giguere chuckled.

“Look at him,” he said.

Stumpy has the work ethic of Kobe Bryant in the body of David Eckstein. A dozen Ducks played more minutes than him Monday, but who was on the ice at the start of the overtime?

A couple of minutes later, he was in the arms of his 11-year-old son Christian, who was pulled out of school with his sister, Thomas’ entire family arriving here from Toronto this week to share in this unexpected joy.

“I said to them, ‘You have to come out here and be part of this,’ ” Stumpy said. “It might never happen again.”

Hard to imagine it happening now.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com

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Going Overboard

*--* Most overtime victories in playoff year: No Team Year OT Rec 10 Montreal 1993 10-1 7 Mighty Ducks 2003 7-0 7 Carolina 2002 7-2 6 Vancouver 1994 6-1 6 N.Y. Islanders 1980 6-1

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