Magic Moment

Paul Kariya lay on the ice, after receiving Scott Stevens’ greeting card Saturday night, a shoulder to the face that left the Mighty Duck captain in a did-you-get-the-number-of-that-Zamboni daze.

There are standard questions in these moments. Such as:

Trainer: Paul, where are you?

Kariya: In the Stanley Cup final.

Trainer: We need help here. Get a doctor, stat.

That answer, which at one time would have had Kariya being prepped for surgery, amazingly is the correct one today. The Ducks are prepping for Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals. Even they have to pinch themselves at times.

Finally, absolutely, without danger of uttering a whopper-like cliche, the Ducks will play the most important game of the season.

They face the New Jersey Devils tonight at Continental Airlines Arena with the Stanley Cup as the prize.

“To tell you the truth, I sometimes go home at night and turn on the television to get the scores from the other NHL games,” Duck right wing Mike Leclerc said. “It sometimes feels weird that we’re still playing.”

And just how much weirder will it feel if the Ducks win?

After 10 seasons and a couple hundred thousand jokes, not to mention the sheer disbelief, even now, from the keepers of “old-time, hockey, eh?” who wave the Canadian flag, the Ducks need only one more victory to hoist the Stanley Cup.

Getting it is the trick.

The Ducks know the numbers well by now.

* They have won only once in New Jersey, in February 1996, and have lost nine consecutive games since.

* The Devils are 11-1 at home during the playoffs, having given up only 13 goals.

* The home team has won nine of 11 Game 7s in the Cup finals.

Those facts dangle in front of a team that only hears yada yada yada with an occasional blah blah blah. Instead, they hear Coach Mike Babcock’s single-thought focus, uttering his words verbatim -- so much so any one of them could be sitting on his lap while he drank a glass of water to prove he wasn’t throwing his voice.

Said Leclerc: “We have an opportunity here.”

Said goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere: “We have to play our game.”

Said Petr Sykora: “We have to push the pace.”

At this point, though, other things filled their heads, thoughts that would have concerned Chris Phillips, the team’s trainer, in the past.

“I think the thing is, you just dream,” center Steve Rucchin said when asked about whether he imagined winning the Cup as a kid.

Therein lies the danger.

This is the stuff that dreams are made of. Or nightmares.

Steve Thomas has waited 19 seasons for this opportunity. Adam Oates has cooled his heels for 18 seasons. Kariya, who returned from Stevens’ battery to score a highlights-at-11 goal, has long fought off media assaults that his career was being wasted in Anaheim.

Those are mental obstacles.

“All season, we have waited for an opportunity to play this kind of game and now it is here,” Oates said. “But if I got caught up in the psychology of this and started thinking about having my best chance to win the Cup in my career, I’d be a wreck. That’s not me. I have a job to do.”

There is a business-as-usual stance by the Devils as well. Yes, they were smoked, 5-2, Saturday. But even that fit into a profile that could have them dancing with the Cup tonight.

The Devils have not won a game outside the Eastern time zone since Feb. 12, when they beat Phoenix, 3-0. At home, though, they have been dogmatic.

That is what they leaned on after Saturday’s loss. The Ducks, after all, have been toxic waste in New Jersey. They’ve been outscored, 12-3, in three games this series.

“I think the way that we play in our building, knowing that we have guys who can score big goals at big times, we feel we can play a lot better,” goalie Martin Brodeur said.

The Devils were 25-11-3-2 at home during the regular season. Yet, they are being stretched physically right now.

Ottawa extended them to seven games in the Eastern Conference finals, while the Ducks had 10 days off waiting for that series to be decided. New Jersey had that out-of-gas look Saturday. The Ducks skated like it was the first day of training camp.

Brodeur has been anything but special the last two games, giving up eight goals. Hardly the resume of a Conn Smythe Trophy winner.

Now the question is whether the Ducks can swamp New Jersey and Brodeur on the road.

“There are a whole lot of reasons we haven’t done well there,” defenseman Keith Carney said. “We let them take the play to us. We let them establish their game. We are confident that we can take our game there.”

To win the Cup, they must.

“We can’t go there and play one or two good periods,” Leclerc said. “This is Game 7. There is only one game left to win.”