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While most of the details only pertain to me personally, but if you agree with anything on this piece, feel free to sign your name or leave a comment of your favorite Giguere moment.

Dear Jean Sebastian (JS) Giguere,

I want to personally thank you for being an Anaheim Duck, in my opinion the model of the Anaheim Ducks for the past several years. I don’t live in Anaheim. I live about 650 miles away. I loved the duo of Kariya and Selanne, what took me away from my love of the Los Angeles Kings, but later got distracted while living in Michigan for a short time. However, your goaltending and your love of the game brought me back to the Anaheim Ducks in 2002. I still loved the Ducks during that short time away, but I didn’t follow the team. I still remember listening to NHL.com’s radio feed of your shutout win of 5-0 over your hero Mario Lemieux in December of 2002.

While going to the Cup Finals in 2003 I was serving my church in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and was only allowed to check my e-mail once a week. My future brother in law taped your shutouts on the VCR and saved the tapes for me. My younger brothers sent me newspaper articles and scores through the mail and internet. Your shutout streak gave me inspiration to achieve difficult goals. Your face of disappointment gave me hope for the team. You taught me an important lesson; you can’t win them all, but you can enjoy the ride along the way.

My son was born March 30, 2007, a few weeks within your son’s birth. I remember reading what was happening with Maxime’s eyes and praying for your family, wondering what it would be like for me to go through the same with my newborn son. Following the playoffs this time was much easier than 2003 (and 2006 for that matter). I was so relieved when you got your job back from Bryz to take on Vancouver, to best Detroit and to finish the finals to win the Cup against Ottawa.

The past two years have been hard for me to watch. I’ve cheered you on every day when others doubted, I knew there was a warrior inside you. You deserve to be number one Giggy. I’m so sad to see you leave the franchise, but I am glad you will be able to rise to the top again. A part of me hopes you shut the Ducks out the next time we see you, as long as you don’t ruin anything for us.

Thank you, J.S. You’re the best.

We won’t ever forget what you did for us.

Sincerely,

Bryce Randle

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I haven’t blogged about the Ducks in a while. I blame that on my schedule with the new DVD I edited and was also an associate producer on entitled, Growing Up Hockey. Now that we are on to a new year and that project is about over, I hope to give more attention to the Ducks of Anaheim and nurse them back to good health.

A few things I have noticed.

1. Name a starting goaltender.

Let me be more specific. Name J.S. Giguere as a starting goaltender. I don’t see the consistency needed as a starting goaltender in Hiller. He can’t do back to back nights and he just hasn’t convinced me that he can carry the team. Giguere has the track record and is showing a performance much better than last year.

2. Getzlaf is/should be a Power Forward.

Being from out of town, I am unable to make it to games much and I can’t pay the price for Center Ice. Point is I don’t SEE a lot of games. I watch about every episode of Ducks TV, read the OC Ducks Blog, munch on my Ducks twitter feed and  clips on YouTube. However, the one game I have made it to was in the end of October against the Stars. It was an exciting game- if you count just the 3rd period. However, if you take a look at Getzlaf’s goal (below) you can see the commanding presence he has.

That was his first goal of the season. He should be scoring more goals like that. Granted, he is one of the best on the team in points, but we expect higher goal production. Yeah, I know what you are saying, “Stop picking on the injured guy.”

3. Defense.

Get us some more defense! Work on the turnovers. Give our goalies a chance to keep us in the game. Niedermayer can’t do it all alone. Today we saw Whitney’s name not be included on the Team USA roster. He went from a favorable chance to a no chance. Our D needs to be tighter. Keep Boynton out there. Our record speaks for itself when he is on the ice.

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Amongst the excitement of have Koivu, Boynton, Lupul and others join the Ducks I have not had time to sit back and think about where our favorite players for the past years have gone. Then Todd Marchant was brought back. Ever since that day I have been waiting to hear some sort of news on Rob Niedermayer.

Where did he go? What is he doing? It’s nearly a month until the preseason starts and he hasn’t signed with any team. Will we see his face in Anaheim again? Will it be soon? I remember when Rob Niedermayer was first a Duck. I thought he added a new kind of face to the team. Then came Adam Oates, Giggy started to become the solid goaltender he is and our team made it to the finals.

This season Rob was a healthy scratch a few times. Could it be because of those scratches we won’t see him in an Anaheim uniform again? We have a lot of people competing for top spots, but I think Rob Niedermayer, our once alternate captain, could be in the mix for the Ducks still. I wouldn’t be surprised if he is on the ice during the season, at some point, but I’m not holding my breath either.

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Koivu is a great signing by GM Bob Murray. At $3.5 million a year (let me remind you that is .5 million cheaper than we got Todd Bertuzzi for) we should be thanking Murray for the steal he just got away with. That should enhance our offense enough to be able to get past Detroit, Chicago and the other Western powerhouses. However, there still remains a void in our defense. Do we try for what D is out there? A Zubov, Bergeron or someone else that can be a top 4 defenseman?

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With the draft and July 1 out of the way, we can almost look back and evaluate how GM Bob Murray did. I like Bob Murray’s move a lot. I was very afraid that when Burke left we would fall apart one trade at a time, but this is not the case.

I still see some holes in the organization, but I expect those to be filled in good time. Let’s take a look at some of the movements so far.

The Draft: I’m not talking about the players traded because we will get to that. We selected 2 in the first round and another five in day two of the draft. We won’t see the immediate effects of the draft take place because the Ducks players tend to stay in development a little longer than other teams bring up their drafted players. Example, Jack Johnson, Anze Kopitar and Sidney Crosby all drafted the same year as Bobby Ryan. Bobby Ryan has developed wonderfully because of the patience he and Brian Burke went through to spend time raising fitness, skill and maturity in the minors as well as other leagues. I don’t think we will see an immediate effect on the franchise, but I like who we drafted and the positions they play.

The Pronger trade: While we will miss Pronger on the blue line very much, I don’t think we will miss the reputation that goes along with him. While sending Prongs out to Philly, we received fan favorite Joffrey Lupul as well as Luca Sbisa and a couple of 1st round draft picks, one for this year and one for next. Lupul was great for the franchise and its been so bittersweet to watch him play for other teams and not do as well as he did with the Ducks. My most fond memory of Lupul was the Playoff game in Colorado in 2005 when the score was Avalanche 3- Lupul 4. He will bring some secondary scoring that we need badly. I can’t say much about Sbisa because I don’t know too much about him. Lupul likes him and he was a first round pick, so I am good. Pronger has done so well for us as fans and as a team (Stanley Cup anyone?) so I know he will be missed.

Selanne and Scott Niedermayer: Aren’t we glad to have these two back for sure. And before the season started, even by the draft! So with those two under contract, we will have the veteran leadership and skill needed to prepare our other teammates for following seasons.

Projected Lines:

Offense

Getzlaf - Ryan - Perry

Lupul - Selanne - (to sign)/Christensen

Ebbett - Carter - Christensen/ Nokelainen

Parros - Brown - (to sign)/Bodie

Defense

S. Niedermayer - Brookbank

Whitney -Wisniewski

Sbisa - Festerling.

Goalies

1A Hiller

1B Giguere

I think the other good thing about the Pronger trade was that it doesn’t force us to trade Giguere away right away. Apparently he has given Murray a short list of teams of he wouldn’t mind being traded too. I suggest we hold on to him until at least pre season. We let him come into training camp, compete for the spot and if Hiller does fine we can get more for him, but I think that having those two in net dramatically increase our changes for winning a cup again.

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I had the wonderful opportunity to attend Game 6 and see a Ducks team that played as well as they should have. I won’t dwell on that success we had in that game. I think Getzlaf played very well. So did Perry. If were Randy Carlyle I would make sure those two guys got some sort of boost in the discipline level though. I think that their bad timing penalties in this penalty cost us a game or two. Every Red Wings fan tells me “Ducks fans and players just whine.” Sorry Detroit fans. You have the Lions. Talk about losing and whining. 

I won’t keep talking about how stupid Ebbett’s two penalties were in Game 6 and how it is incredibly lame that we had two bench minors. That’s all over and we pulled off a win in that incredible awesome game. In fact we scored while I was critiquing the Ducks on what we should improve on and the girl in front of me turned around and said, all smarty like, “excuse me sir, no offense, but you were just talking bad about the team and then they scored so maybe you should keep doing it and then they will prove you wrong.”

Um, thanks chick. I actually watch a lot of hockey, coach and consult in the hockey world, but we don’t need to get into that. 

Game 7. Ugh. What a bummer. Such a great comeback. We nearly had it. While some players can take the blame for what happened, those players had great nights other nights where the main guys didn’t. The Ducks lost as a team. I do think that last goal will have an effect on Hiller. Hiller could have made a better save and he knew it. That’s why he was madder than he had ever been after it was called a goal. I don’t think we should trade Giguere until November to see how Hiller holds up. Most Ducks fans disagree. I will stand by that. 

This off season should be interesting. I am proud of our 8th seed team that most had written off to not even make the playoffs in February. I think Detroit will go on to repeat. After living in Michigan for five years of my life, I can say I am okay with that. Detroit is skilled. I respect the organization like no other. I think we just witnessed the real finals last night.

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We all saw it coming. A classic Detroit beat down. I went to pickup hockey on Wednesday night, as I do every week, and I was prepared to take a beating about the Ducks win against Detroit on the “no-goal” whistle. Surprisingly I did not have to because I forgot that most of the people I play with are Avs fans. So luckily, they have all jumped on the Ducks playoff wagon. Thursday night was familiar. It was not cool. However, it was a slight deja vu experience for those of us who watched the last time Detroit and Anaheim faced each other in a playoff series. In 2007 the series went Game 1:Detroit. Game 2: Anaheim. Game 3: Detroit. Now pause with me, that was one of those most brutal games. Giggy let in a few goals and then Bryz let in a goal on his first shot. We lost 5-0. Ouch. Then Pronger got suspended for his elbow on Holmstrom. Oddly enough this series Holmstrom is the one throwing the elbows around and not getting punished at all. 

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My favorite game of the series against the Wings was Game 5. With the late goal by Scotty in the third off of Lidstrom’s stick and the impressive forechecking by Andy McDonald, Selanne was able to close out Game 5 in Overtime with this unforgettable goal against Hasek.

With Game 1 starting tomorrow in Detroit, as a bold Ducks fan I say Anaheim can win it in 6 just as they did two years ago. I think that the adrenaline of beating San Jose will carry over and the Wings will not be as prepared with an easy sweep of Columbus.

Anaheim will win one of those first two games in Detroit. They need to if they want to win the series at all.

The Ducks will close the series out on home ice at the Honda Center.

Getzlaf must continue to play his “Gordie Howe Hat Trick” style of play. Selanne needs to find the back of the net more often. Overall I am very pleased with our defenese, especially from Beauchemin and the newcomer James Wisniewski.

Detroit will be a great contender and by no means should be looked at as “just another huge ego” as many of us Ducks fans looked at San Jose. Many of those players know how to turn it on in the playoffs and will do so. I think that the lack of Draper will hurt them in Games 1 & 2, but only if people like Drew Miller, Todd Marchant and Andrew Ebbett can play similar to how they played in the series against the Sharks.

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The Ducks have an important game  tonight in Anaheim. There are a few advantages to the situation the boys in black have. Must-win games familiarity, home ice and the elimination record.

All this season the Ducks have played games where they were in “must-win” situations. With the rest of the season upon them at the trade deadline, the Ducks found themselves to be a team on the outside looking in. Somehow, some miraculous way, Coach Randy Carlyle got his new blood team to band together and get back up to the 8th seed. The Sharks have coasted through out the season and while the President Trophy winners have obviously played spectacular, they haven’t had to turn on the heat when it mattered. Here’s to hoping the Ducks know how to turn on that heat easily.

Home ice. Every elimination game that the Ducks faced in 2007 during the Stanley Cup run ended in a victory. Anaheim fans need to rise and intimidate the Sharks. There must be no seat left unsold, no shirt left turned Orange, Black or White. While home ice this season has not be a factor for the Ducks, it has been in the past two years. Fans know how to support their team in this town, but that is not to say that we have been doing the best job as of late.

The elimination record. The Ducks are around 14-6 now in games where their opponent faces elimination. The Sharks are 5-16 when they face elimination. I do not have the exact stats with me, but I quote from memory from Versus televised broadcast Saturday night. The Ducks know how to destroy the hope of a team looking for the faith that they can win.

I expect a big showing from Selanne, Getzlaf and Scott Niedermayer tonight. I would throw Hiller in there too, but I am enjoying being surprised by him way too much. Selanne needs to bring his game up just enough to get a goal. I was impressed by his play on Saturday night and his crossbar hit was heartbreaking, but his veteran leadership isn’t enough on its own. He needs to get a goal or an assist on a key goal.

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