ANAHEIM — The ghosts are everywhere around the Honda Center in Anaheim. You can pretend they’re not there, but there is one around every corner, down every hallway.
Visions of Justin Abdelkader’s unassisted short-handed goal in 2013 that put Detroit ahead for good in a Game 7 that set the Ducks on this path of unfulfillment. The ghost of now-backup Ducks goalie John Gibson, who let in four of the first 18 shots he saw and got the hook early in Period 2 against the Los Angeles Kings, leaving his team trailing 4-1 in another Game 7 to be remembered here as Pond scum.
A head coach with five losses at home in Game 7s, between this team and his former one, the Washington Capitals. You know Bruce Boudreau wants to put an end to the storyline that his teams are always good in the regular season, but never when it counts, in May and June.
STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS: | Broadcast Schedule
Rogers NHL GameCentre LIVE | Stanley Cup Playoffs Fantasy Hockey
New Sportsnet app: iTunes | Google Play
What about Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry? When do they put on the kind of performance that Duncan Keith and Jonathan Toews delivered for Chicago in Game 6?
Or will the quotes after Saturday’s Game 7 be the same old song and dance from this Ducks crew, a team that simply came up small in a big game Wednesday in Chicago.
“It started with me. I was terrible tonight,” Getzlaf said after Game 6. “I’ve got to be better and calm our group down as we go.”
Did he mean, be a better leader in the dressing room?
“I’ve got to be better on the ice. It doesn’t matter what I say if I go out there and play like that,” the Ducks captain said. “That’s on me, to be ready to play and make better plays with the puck.”
Getzlaf and Perry came up small in Game 6. And they’ve come up small in Games 6 and 7 in the past three post-seasons. So, as we cross the Mountain time zone for one last (merciful) time in this seven-game tong war of a Western Conference final, the time has come to address the Anaheim Ducks’ dirty little secret.
Anaheim won a Stanley Cup in 2007 when Getzlaf and Perry were 22-year-old support players. But ever since they’ve been wearing letters on this club, the Ducks have become San Jose south.
“Good leaders,” began Boudreau on Thursday, “what they do is they take the brunt of the criticism to save a lot of their other teammates. I think Ryan made a couple mistakes, like a lot of other guys did. But he was up front, and he’s taking the bullet for everybody else.”
The irony there is Boudreau is making that statement to take the heat off of Getzlaf.
You see, there is a difference between Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane and, say, the San Jose twosome of Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau. The former have learned to win in May where the latter just never found a way.
There aren’t enough column inches on the Internet to fully delve into why some guys play better in contests like Game 6, where Chicago’s three best players — including defenceman Keith — ensured victory for the Hawks. “A lot of that to me is a phrase I use: The will and the want,” said Boudreau. “We felt we got out-willed and out-wanted last night.”
It was only one game, sure. But there was one game in 2013 against Detroit, and two chances to eliminate L.A. last year. Now, another one squandered in Chicago, in which Anaheim’s leaders — Getzlaf, Perry and Ryan Kesler — were run over by Chicago’s best players. The same way Thornton, Marleau, or Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom in Washington, have been bested for too many springs now by whoever is on the other side of the equation.
In a must-win game for the Hawks, the three or four best players on the ice all wore red sweaters. Now, we expect Keith to outshine 21-year-old Hampus Lindholm in that situation, but tell me why Getzlaf and Kesler combined for zero points and a minus-5, while going a combined 25 per cent in the faceoff circle?
Perry, the Ducks’ most lethal goal scorer, had one shot on goal and zero points in Game 6. In a world of absolutes, there is an old hockey saying that applies to scorers who don’t score in a big game, or stellar faceoff men who spit the bit in a series-clinching game:
Not. Good. Enough.
Download Sportsnet magazine now: iOS | Android | Windows
Getzlaf, meanwhile, had zero points, and was a minus-3 while going 27 per cent in the circle last night. In Games 6 and 7 of the Kings series last spring combined, Getzlaf had one assist, was minus-3, and didn’t have a single-game faceoff percentage better than 32 per cent.
In Games 6-7 vs. Detroit the year before: one assist, minus-1, with draw percentages of 29 and 44.
Here are Perry’s Game 6 and 7 numbers vs. L.A. (one goal, minus-3, six shots) and Detroit (one assist, minus-1, nine shots).
Now Chicago comes to town, a proven winner with a roster stocked with big-game players. The ghosts of Game 7s past will be rattling around the Honda Center, as Getzlaf and Perry get one more chance to take over a crucial hockey game, and show their team the way.
It is why they wear the ‘C’ and an ‘A’. It is why they get the big bucks.
It is why we watch the game. For moments exactly like this.