Ducks Grab Win as Tough Season Ends

Jean-Sebastien Giguere was the last man standing for the Mighty Ducks 10 months ago.

He was brought back onto the ice after a Game 7 loss to New Jersey in the Stanley Cup finals and, with tears soaking his mountain-man-like playoff beard, was handed the Conn Smythe Trophy.

On Sunday, Giguere, shaved and shorn, again was the last Duck off the ice. He trudged toward the dressing room, dry-eyed, taking a water bottle with him after a 2-1 victory over Calgary in front of a sellout crowd of 17,174. It was a satisfying end to a season that he had thought would again put a playoff beard on his face.

The pile of splinters that were too often scattered around his goal crease this season showed Giguere’s frustration, in himself and with the team.

“I broke more sticks [on the crossbar] than I have ever broken in my life,” Giguere said. “There was no need to do that.”

The Ducks are the fifth team to go from the Stanley Cup finals to out of the playoffs in one season. They followed the route that Carolina had mapped after reaching the 2002-03 finals. The team slogan went from “I Am a Mighty Duck” to “You Are Like the Hurricanes” quickly, as a poor start was followed by a terrible midseason and was finished with the Ducks going 5-9-1-0 in their last 15 games.

The victory Sunday was in sharp contrast to the rest of the season. Third-period goals by Martin Skoula and Sergei Fedorov rallied the Ducks. Giguere was big in net when he had to be, stopping 22 of 23 shots. He allowed only Jarome Iginla’s short-handed goal, which gave Iginla a league-high 41 goals.

“That was an all-right game for us,” Fedorov said. “I kind of feel pretty good about the job we did today. That’s about it.”

That seemed to mirror much of the Duck inertia this season.

“You are what you are,” Coach Mike Babcock said. “And we are not in the playoffs. It’s going to be really disappointing Wednesday, when those other teams start having fun [in the playoffs].”

There is so much to compare and contrast between the Ducks this season and the team that reached the Stanley Cup finals in June.

But for Giguere, it comes down to attitude.

“We had a bad attitude from the start,” Giguere said. “We should have been positive instead of negative. We’re going to try to change this thing. From the general manager to the training, we got to be positive.

“As soon as things started going bad, we didn’t know how to deal with it and we started being negative. I was negative most of the year.”

The mental aspect was a running theme with Duck leadership.

“We have to be ready to make a commitment to each other,” defenseman Keith Carney said. “We didn’t do that this season.”

No one was ready with a reason why. The Ducks, though, did seem to miss the single-minded focus that Paul Kariya, Adam Oates and Steve Thomas each gave them last season. All left as free agents.

Said Fedorov: “You have to be shoulder to shoulder with your linemate. You have to do something for each other. That jumped out at me in the locker room. I know I’m a new guy, but that was something that was wrong.”

Duck General Manager Bryan Murray said he was ready to address it. He refused to part with any key players at the trade deadline, but indicated that he would need to bring in a different breed of player.

“Obviously, we need a couple changes,” Murray said. “We have to get a more hard-nosed, gritty kind of guy than we have at the present. We want that next year.”

The Ducks also want a better season from Giguere, who finished the season with a 2.62 goals-against and .914 save percentage, his career worst as a Duck. Things became so bad for him this season that opposing teams stopped complaining about the size of his pads.

Giguere, though, does not question his own abilities, even if others do.

“I have proved I can do the job and be successful,” Giguere said. “The only thing I need to do next year is be myself.... If some people don’t feel I can do the job, they can look back at the last two years. It tells them that I can do it.”

Giguere, though, is considering consulting a sports psychologist this summer, looking for an extra edge. There may be others who Duck management might wish to follow that lead.

“We think, and I believe, we have a real high-end talent base,” Murray said. “We haven’t played as hard as we should have on a regular basis. Injuries are part of that, but the mental part of the business is almost as important as physical. We demonstrated that we didn’t have the ability to rebound, whether it was from an injury or from a loss.”

The Ducks’ woes started well before the season. Steve Rucchin had knee surgery two weeks before training camp and had not been completely healthy since. Carney broke his foot in the last exhibition game and sat out the first month, then injured his ankle.

Injuries took others out of the lineup. Rob Niedermayer and Sandis Ozolinsh missed several games. Mike Leclerc played only 10 games

Fedorov and Vaclav Prospal, the team’s marquee free agent signings missed large chunks of the season by skating through the motions. Fedorov had 10 goals in the first 31 games, but six of those came in three two-goal performances. Prospal had a 17-game goal-less streak and didn’t start piling up points until the Ducks were well out of the race.

“Maybe we thought as players we would be better than we really are,” Rucchin said. “I don’t believe that’s the case. We got a lot of talent on this team. We have to be a lot more prepared and work at it to make it happen. You can’t expect things to happen on their own.”