Focus on Giguere With Ducks Facing Elimination

Jean-Sebastien Giguere sat at the end of the Mighty Ducks’ bench, barely moving as his teammates came and went through the door.

His night had ended 21 minutes and three seconds into the game, after he’d given up the third goal on the eighth shot of the Calgary Flames’ eventual 3-2 victory over the Ducks on Saturday before a roaring, raucous, red-wearing crowd at Pengrowth Saddledome, a triumph that put the Ducks on the verge of summertime.

“It’s never fun to be pulled,” Giguere said. “Saying that, we’re down, 3-0, and the coach is looking for a spark, something different.”

Giguere had not been terrible. His defensemen had become statues in front of him and made bad decisions. His forwards had been negligent in letting the Flames walk out of the corners and stand unchecked in the slot for the kinds of shots no goaltender can be expected to stop.

But he hadn’t been scintillating.

Not for a minute. Not for a second.

Very little the Ducks did on Saturday suggested that they’re capable of tying the series on Monday at the Arrowhead Pond and packing for a return to Calgary on Wednesday for a seventh game.

Not the two goals they scored in the third period, when the game was well beyond their reach, not backup goalie Ilya Bryzgalov’s 11 saves in the second period and eight saves in the third period.

“You need two goalies if we play like we did in the first two periods,” Teemu Selanne said. “The third period was better, but 40 minutes of hockey, we played bad. We didn’t deserve to win. OK, it was 3-2, but we didn’t give ourselves a chance to win.”

Their only chance to prolong this series would be for Giguere to become the Giguere of 2003, the brilliant goalie who stunned the defending Stanley Cup champion Detroit Red Wings in the first round, stymied the Dallas Stars in six games in the second round, stonewalled the Minnesota Wild in a sweep of the Western Conference final and was named the most valuable player in the playoffs after the Ducks’ seven-game loss to New Jersey in the Final.

He has given no indication that he has that in him.

He has not shown that kind of quickness in moving from post to post, that infallible knack for judging angles, the resolve to face barrages of shots and catch the puck in his glove and sweep it in the air with a cocky flourish, inches away from the face of a frustrated foe.

Only briefly this season did he approach that stellar form. During the Ducks’ last trip of the regular season, to Vancouver and Edmonton, he was sharp and confident and won the playoff-clinching game against the Canucks and nearly beat the Oilers in a game the Ducks didn’t deserve to win. As quickly as his old form returned, it fled.

That might be because of the “lower-body injury” that kept him out of the series opener. When the injury prevented him from playing in Game 1, he promised to be forthcoming about it when the series ends. That day might arrive on Monday.

Despite his early exit, Giguere said he was not disheartened, that Monday’s game “should be a good match,” and that of course, he wants to start.

Whether he has earned the right to start that game, based on his performance in this series, is another matter.

“This is just a bump in the road,” he said. “My focus is still the same. The playoffs are still fun.

“You go through all kinds of emotions, all kinds of scenarios. You learn from them and you get better. We’re a better team because we went through what we went through tonight.”

Much better and they’ll play themselves into elimination.

Giguere has two points on his side for being designated the starter on Tuesday. Neither team has won two consecutive games in this series, and if that form holds, the Ducks would win Game 6 and at least prolong what seems inevitable.

Also on his side is his playoff history, though it recedes into the ever-more-distant past as each day goes by.

For the rest of his career, Giguere’s performances will be compared to that 2003 playoff run. That’s probably not fair, but it’s human nature to seek a reference point, to quantify and measure and compare one home run hitter to another, one goal scorer to another of the next generation.

The Ducks this season are a better team than they were three years ago, faster, more skillful. They’re suited to the new, offense-friendly NHL, tweaked expertly by Brian Burke since he took over last summer as general manager.

With more scoring potential to tap, a more mobile defense and the invaluable Stanley Cup championship experience owned by Scott Niedermayer, the Ducks figured to rely less on Giguere than they did three years ago.

But he has not stolen a game or made an impossible save that they could build upon. If he’s ever going to do that, Monday is the day.