Championship team never ran out of pluck
The Anaheim Ducks are the 2007 Stanley Cup champions.
Let that sentence hang there until it sinks in. Repeat it aloud a few times and only then does it start to sound right, and natural.
The postgame partying has ended, although a giant public party is set for Saturday evening when fans will gather outside the Honda Center to applaud, to stare at the Cup amid disbelief and joy, to shout and maybe even cry.
The champagne and beer spilled in a jubilant dressing room have dried up. The smoke from victory cigars has cleared.
But the memories were still flowing freely the day after the finest moment in the 14-year history of the franchise, a 6-2 victory that ousted the Ottawa Senators in five games and set off a celebration on Katella Avenue.
The special moments of this championship season come tumbling back, so many of them, so full of fire and spirit and triumph.
There were, of course, the defining ones.
The July 3 trade for Chris Pronger made the hockey world take notice and the Ducks’ blazing 27-4-6 start made people believe.
There was Teemu Selanne’s 500th goal, when not all that long ago a wrecked knee had people saying he was finished.
There were less obvious moments too.
One came in a midseason game against Dallas in which Selanne got his first hat trick in six years, but he chose not to talk about any of the goals. All he could talk about, even as he started to choke up, was how his performance had fulfilled a promise to a seriously ill friend back home in Finland.
Another came on a March night against the Phoenix Coyotes. Ric Jackman and Joe DiPenta, two journeymen who found a home in Anaheim, scored the team’s goals in a 2-1 victory. DiPenta’s third-period winner caromed off two Coyotes and in.
Then came the playoffs: any of Scott Niedermayer’s three monumental goals; the emergence of Samuel Pahlsson as a defensive star; and Rob Niedermayer giving the now-celebrated “brotherly shove” to clear big bro for the overtime winner against Vancouver.
And who would have thought the Ducks could win without a suspended Pronger in both the conference finals and Cup finals or that low-scoring farm boy Travis Moen would net the biggest goal of his life to beat Ottawa in Game 1.
But there are always some moments that time won’t wash away.
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It starts with Game 5 in Detroit.
The Ducks were hopelessly outplayed for 58 minutes and 20,000-plus in Joe Louis Arena were ready for the Red Wings to head to Anaheim with a 3-2 series lead. But the score was only 1-0 because Jean-Sebastien Giguere simply wouldn’t let his team lose. All they needed was one final shot.
They took that shot with 1:47 left after Ducks Coach Randy Carlyle, seeing Pavel Datsyuk head to the penalty box, pulled Giguere to get an extra attacker on the ice for a 6-on-4 edge. Risky, yes, but Carlyle is, if nothing else, decisive.
Pronger keeps the puck in, Selanne drops it to Scott Niedermayer in the slot and the shot flutters in off Nicklas Lidstrom’s stick. Niedermayer, the unassuming captain, is who he is because he delivers in moments like that.
Flush with renewed life in overtime, McDonald and Selanne together turn the series for good. McDonald pressures Detroit’s Andreas Lilja into a turnover and Selanne picks Dominik Hasek apart with his signature backhand.
Even with 540 goals in what will be a Hall of Fame career, Selanne had been criticized in the past for not delivering in the postseason. San Jose fans won’t ever forgive him for missing an open wraparound in Game 7 of the 2002 West semifinals against Colorado.
No one is criticizing him now.
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Sometimes Scott Niedermayer makes it look too easy with the way he glides across the ice in a sport built on collisions.
It isn’t. What lies beneath is a fierce drive to win.
Niedermayer is the NHL’s ultimate winner. The only player to have won a major junior hockey title, a world junior title, a World Cup, a world championship, an Olympic gold medal and a Stanley Cup. Now he’s the only active player with four rings. Fortunate? Yes. Coincidence? No.
There was a moment last season during the Ducks’ run to the Western Conference finals. The Ducks were about to eliminate Calgary in Game 7 and players were jumping around on the bench. Niedermayer sat there stone-faced. To him, it was merely a first-round win.
This time around, Game 4 of the Cup finals against Ottawa was another reminder of that laser-like focus.
Daniel Alfredsson fired the puck at Niedermayer as the second period ended. Furious at the time, Niedermayer composed himself and then, in the dressing room, settled down his rambunctious teammates. No anger. Just focus. The Ducks would dominate the third period in a 3-2 victory.
“He’s knows what’s important,” forward Corey Perry said.
Watching the low-key Niedermayer every day is the only way to gain a full appreciation of just how dominant a player he is. He is Tim Duncan on skates.
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Nothing could wipe a smile off Giguere’s face Wednesday night, not even when he was asked if that was his final game as a Duck because he becomes an unrestricted free agent July 1 unless a new deal is worked out.
He kept right on smiling, because the former playoffs MVP now has the trophy he really wanted all along.
Beset by injuries last season and whispers that he was overrated, Giguere this season cemented his status as one of the NHL’s elite goalies. These playoffs only reinforced that.
No, he didn’t need to be the superhero every night, as he was in 2003 when he drove that plucky Ducks team to Game 7 against New Jersey. This time, he needed to be a hero only when he had to be, stealing the games he needed to, in a show-stopping display of skill, reflexes and unbreakable will.
And the Montreal native did this while starting the playoffs in an emotionally fragile state because his new son, Maxime Olivier, was born with a deformed right eye. For a 48-hour period after his birth, there was concern that the boy wouldn’t be able to see at all.
Maxime is the first child for Giguere and his wife, Kristen. Family means everything to him and that was painfully apparent when he struggled to compose himself in front of reporters after revealing his son’s medical condition.
Gritty center Todd Marchant said Giguere is as tough mentally as anyone he has ever played with in his 12-year career. And who would argue?
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