Anaheim 4, Detroit 3 The Ducks of Anaheim spent two periods last night trying to eliminate the Detroit Red Wings from Stanley Cup contention, then spent the better part of the third period attempting to force a game seven. Having out shot the Wings 26-13, and outscoring them 3-0, the Ducks held on to win Game 6 in the Honda Center 4-3 to send back to Hockeytown one of the NHL’s most storied franchises.
Rob Niedermayer redirected a shot shorthanded early in the first period to give Anaheim a 1-0 lead. “They got the shorthanded goal early and we lost our composure a little bit,” coach Mike Babcock said. “In the end you want to win so bad, it got in the way of our poise and execution.”
Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf (power play) scored the Ducks goals in the second period, pushing their lead to 3-0. While the Ducks thrived on special teams in the first two periods, the Wings faltered.
Along with allowing Niedermayer’s goal, the Wings were 0-for-4 on the power play and only registered one shot on goal.
In the third period, the Ducks decided to make it interesting, as the Red Wings mounted a rally helped by the Ducks’ penchant for taking penalties. The Wings began their comeback on Henrik Zetterberg’s sixth goal of the playoffs at 3:15, a deflection of a Chris Chelios shot, which cut the Ducks lead to 3-1.
With the Wings pressing, Anaheim seemed to restore order when Samuel Pahlsson put a rebound past Hasek at 5:54, giving the Ducks a 4-1 lead. “We had a real good effort,” Zetterberg said. “We scored three goals in that last period, but we just came up short. It’s real tough right now.”
The Red Wings outshot the Ducks 16-3 and got two power plays goals from Pavel Datsyuk, the last with 3:04 remaining. “They took the attitude that this was desperation and they started to control the puck,” Anaheim coach Randy Carlyle said. “Our counteraction was that we didn’t skate. We stood still, and we just kept feeding them the puck.”
With the score 4-3 late in the third, the Ducks just weren’t satisfied. They had to make it more interesting by taking a hooking penalty at 17:08, and played shorthanded most of the last three minutes. “Third period was a little scary,” Ducks center Todd Marchant said. “It seemed like anything we did, we got called on. I took a penalty, a tripping call. We got a hooking call.
“But you know what, we were able to stay with it.”
Jean-Sebastien Giguere insisted he didn’t win the Western Conference finals. Dominik Hasek didn’t necessarily agree. “He (Giguere) played great. I hate to say he played better than me, but maybe he did,” Dominik Hasek said. “He stole Game 5, and that was the key to the series.“You have to be a little bit lucky, and he was. He won the series for that team.”
Giguere finished with 26 saves. Hasek had 25. Hasek said he would decide in a few weeks whether he’ll be back next season.
As a locker room overflowed with excitement over the achievement, Chris Pronger remembered coming up one game short with Edmonton last season. And so he kept a laser-like focus on the ultimate prize, stating, “we haven’t done anything yet.”
“It’s not good enough for a lot of us to get there,” Pronger said. “We want to win.”
Well, so it seemed for most of the game.
