In Game 1, Giguere Held Up His End

By most accounts, goaltending was the least of the Mighty Ducks’ concerns after their 3-0 loss Tuesday to the New Jersey Devils in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals.

Jean-Sebastien Giguere gave up a knuckler to New Jersey’s Jeff Friesen after Paul Kariya had fallen and failed to tie up Friesen in the second period. Grant Marshall scored in the third period after Patrik Elias recovered a rebound and slipped a pass to his uncovered teammate, who had an easy tap-in for the second goal.

Friesen scored his second goal of Game 1 after Giguere had been pulled in favor of a sixth skater in the final seconds, the last of New Jersey’s 30 shots on net. Giguere made 27 saves.

“Jiggy did what he’s done for us the whole playoffs,” defenseman Keith Carney said. “He gave us a chance to win the game. He deserved better than what we gave him tonight.”

Giguere expressed disappointment in his teammates’ lackluster play after Game 1, and didn’t back off from his comments Wednesday.

“Well, for us to be successful we’ve got to do what we do,” he said. “Yesterday, we didn’t do that. There are a lot of things we went through with the videotape this morning that we usually end up doing, so tomorrow there will be no secret to our game. It’s very simple. Just follow the game plan, do it as hard as you can, and we’ll see what’s going to happen at the end.”

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Giguere scoffed when asked about Commissioner Gary Bettman’s suggestion that one sure-fire way to increase scoring is to increase the size of the nets from the current four feet high by six feet wide.

“I think that’s silly,” Giguere said. “You change the whole game around if you do that. It’s like basketball making the hoops bigger.... You don’t want to see games with 8-7 scores. That’s not a fun game to play in. I think it’s ridiculous.”

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Upon further review, Coach Mike Babcock said nothing he watched on the videotape of Game 1 would prompt him to make drastic changes for Game 2 tonight.

“I could change a whole bunch of stuff, but I’m not a big change guy,” Babcock said. “Until your team comes out and competes and skates, how do you know if you should change? You haven’t given your team a chance to evaluate that.

“Guys who have been good for me all during the playoffs, why weren’t they good last night? I don’t want to overreact on that. It was one game.”

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Kariya is trying to complete the rarest of hat tricks, winning a Stanley Cup championship after victories in the NCAA championships and the Olympics. Kariya was an NCAA champion with the University of Maine in 1993 and helped Canada win gold in 2002 at Salt Lake City.

Neal Broten won a Frozen Four title with the University of Minnesota in 1979, was a member of the U.S. gold medal team at the 1980 Olympics and played on New Jersey’s first Stanley Cup championship team in 1995.