Mighty wind

Ducks sitting pretty thanks to Jiggy's stardust

The ghost of Ron Wilson is being exorcised, old Emilio Estevez jokes are getting dusted off, Mickey Mouse is clicking his heels. The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim are on the verge of knocking the Stanley Cup champion Red Wings out of the playoffs.

In case you missed it, the Ducks have played in the National Hockey League for 10 years now, which is analogous to the Bad News Bears celebrating a decade in the majors. The Ducks' mighty quiet history has included just two trips to the postseason and only one playoff series win -- under Wilson in 1997. It's a history that has been about Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne and ... that's pretty much it. With all due respect to Guy Hebert, who gallantly protected the Anaheim net for more than eight seasons, the Ducks have never seen anything like Jean-Sebastien Giguere.

They call him Jiggy, which sounds more like the moniker of a cheerful, tubby hockey broadcaster, but should remind you of Terry Sawchuk and the reason a playoff series stands at Mighty Ducks 3, Red Wings 0. Game 4 is Wednesday and even if the Red Wings elude the guillotine this time, it's very hard to imagine dear Jiggy letting them go four-and-oh on him.

This is a guy who has stopped 133 of 137 shots through the first three games. Earlier this year he went 237 minutes -- or about about as long as an Oscars broadcast -- without allowing a goal. In Game 1 of the Red Wings series, a triple-OT affair, he made 63 saves, which is about week's worth to most goalies. "My job is to make saves, that's all I'm focusing on," he says. In his first playoff series Giguere has already learned to speak as cautiously as a veteran. "I don't want to say anything to fire those guys up," he said in reference to the defending champs after Game 3.

Giguere is 25 and hails from Montreal, which helps explain why we've had to pardon the French of so many Red Wings forwards over the past few games. "Zut!" Detroit left wing Brendan Shanahan was heard to mutter after Giguere stoned him on a breakaway. "Sacre bleu!" exclaimed Henrik Zetterberg when his close range shot was denied late in the Ducks' 2-1 win on Monday.

Giguere hasn't done this entirely on his own. The Ducks are still Kariya-centric, but they have a mix that satisfies the young (25-year-old MoDo-made Sami Pahlsson, and Stanislav Chistov, a 19-year-old with hands of quicksilver) and the old (40-year-old pass-maker Adam Oates and 39-year-old goal-scorer Steve Thomas).

Years ago I was talking to a New York Islanders trainer about how certain players handled pain. "Most of them are pretty much the same," he said. "Except Steve Thomas. He can handle anything. It's insane." An ability to tolerate extreme discomfort would seem to perfectly suit one for a career with the gloomy Ducks, who have typically drawn fewer fans than a B-movie screening. But when Thomas came over from the Blackhawks with 12 games to play in the regular season Anaheim was already all abuzz and playoff-bound.

The California sun made Thomas young again. He scored 10 times in those dozen games, then potted the winner on wicked shot in Game 2 against Detroit. That completed a comeback during which the Ducks scored twice in the final eight minutes to win 3-2. The Red Wings were seeing visions of the Kings, who rallied from a 3-0 deficit with six minutes to play to beat Detroit in Game 4 of a first-round playoff series in 2001.

The Ducks' California neighbors went on to win that series two years ago and then take the Avalanche to Game 7 in the Western Conference semis. Can Anaheim go that far this year? Further? How long before this Jiggy is up?

Sports Illustrated senior writer Kostya Kennedy takes sides each week at SI.com.

 

Related information

Stories

SI.com's NHL playoff coverage Previous Kostya Kennedy columns

Multimedia

Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video