A Focused Giguere Is Sharp, but Offense Lags Behind

The search for silver linings pretty much stopped at goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere after the Mighty Ducks’ 2-0 loss to the Phoenix Coyotes on Sunday.

Giguere, making his second start of the season, more closely resembled the goalie who dragged the Ducks through the Stanley Cup playoffs and into the finals last spring. He stopped 26 of 27 shots, allowing only a power-play goal to Ladislav Nagy.

“J.S. is going to be there for us, we know that,” team captain Steve Rucchin said. “It was the guys in front of him that didn’t put forth the effort.”

Still, Giguere was pleased to cleanse his palate after giving up four goals in the opener against Dallas.

“Personally, I was happy with how I played,” Giguere said. “But the end of the matter is I wanted to get the win.”

Giguere had to be sharp from the game’s first moment. The Coyotes got off 17 shots in the first period.

“I wanted to be focused from the start, whether I saw two shots or 17,” Giguere said. “I wanted to play well for the full 60 minutes.”

Unfortunately for Giguere, his teammates were not on the 60-minute plan.

“J.S. got on a roll,” center Sergei Fedorov said. “But if you don’t score, you don’t win.”

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The Ducks were without one of their top four defensemen for a good chunk of the second period. Kurt Sauer had to leave the game with a broken skate blade. He played only 3 minutes 33 seconds in the period and 13:15 in the game.

He’d averaged 17 minutes in the first two games.

“I left eight minutes into the period and got back with four minutes left,” Sauer said. “[Eight minutes] doesn’t seem like a lot of time, but those were shifts I could have been taking to help the team.”

The Ducks used their offensive defensemen more in the third period. Sandis Ozolinsh played 25:27, Ruslan Salei 25:18 and Niclas Havelid 22:40.

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There was a moment of silence before the game for Atlanta defenseman Dan Snyder, who died in an automobile accident last Sunday, and for Frank Welch, a veteran sportswriter with the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group, who died Friday of colon and liver cancer.