ShareThisBy JIM ALEXANDER
The Press-Enterprise
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
If the Anaheim Ducks stole one from the Detroit Red Wings in Game 4 last Thursday, would Sunday's result be considered grand larceny?
They were horrendously outplayed for, oh, most of the afternoon. Anaheim was out-shot 33-15 over the first 58 minutes, hemmed into its own territory for much of the day, alive only because goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere was playing like a Conn Smythe Trophy winner.
Again.
And now Giguere might actually be in line to win his second Conn Smythe. After all, you have to get to the Stanley Cup Finals to have a shot at the award given to the playoffs' outstanding performer.
We'll avoid the clichi about a masked man and a robbery. But isn't it obvious? Maybe instead of calling him J. S. we should just Anglicize his first name to Jesse, as in James.
If Giguere hadn't been as good as he was in the face of Detroit's sustained pressure, Scott Niedermayer wouldn't have been in position to tie the game with a power-play goal at 19:12 of the third period. Teemu Selanne wouldn't have been able to win it in overtime. And the Ducks wouldn't have an opportunity to close out the Red Wings on Tuesday night in Anaheim.
"It could have been 3-0 or 4-0," Chris Pronger said. "But he made the saves when he needed to, to keep us in the game. He gave us that chance, and we were fortunate enough to get it for him."
Which was the best sequence?
The back-to-back-to-back saves on Pavel Datsyuk, Kyle Quincey and Quincey again midway through the first period?
The rejection when Valtteri Filppula tried to stuff the puck in after a Niedermayer giveaway in the second?
The four saves in a 15-second span on Henrik Zetterberg, Nicklas Lidstrom, Lidstrom again and Mikael Samuelsson to help kill a penalty and keep the margin 1-0 in the second period?
Or the back-to-back stops on Jonathan Franzen with just less than six minutes left?
Oh, and let's not forget some other close calls. Filppula had a lot of net to shoot at in the first overtime and put it wide. And the goalie's best friend, the post, got in the way of two Lidstrom shots _ part of a truly forgettable day for the Norris Trophy candidate, since he also deflected Niedermayer's tying goal past Dominik Hasek.
It was all in a day's work for Giguere, who has faced 76 shots in the past two games, stopped 72 of them, and isn't of the opinion that he's playing as well as he can.
"There's been a lot of goals-against in this series, so there's always a way to improve your game," he said. "But it doesn't matter. At the end of the day it's about winning and losing in the playoffs. You've got to find ways to win. It doesn't matter if it's 12-11 or 2-1.
"I just wanted to make sure we still had a chance. I can't control what we do offensively. I can't control how Hasek's playing. I can only control what I bring to the game and to the ice. I knew that if I kept playing my game, we would have a chance at the end. And we took advantage of it."
Of course, the best move he made all day might have been skating to the bench with 1:47 to play. When Datsyuk was whistled for interference, Randy Carlyle pulled Giguere right then for a 6-on-4 advantage, which Niedermayer cashed in for his 22nd career playoff goal.
"The goaltender was going to come out at some point" anyway, Carlyle said.
"We executed. Pronger moved the puck down to Selanne, into the middle to Niedermayer, and he shot it. And that's what happens when you direct the puck. Sometimes the bounces go for you, sometimes they go against you."
The trick is to be in position to take advantage of those bounces. Again, that's where Giguere comes in.
"We have full faith in Jiggy," Ryan Getzlaf said. "He's been battling hard for us the whole season and throughout these playoffs, and we let him know it when he gets in that room."
Maybe they can show their appreciation by voting him a double playoff share.
