Yesterday, I spoke about some great memories of the Ducks’ 2003 second round triumph over the Dallas Stars. True, these moments aren’t great for all involved, but irrespective of their emotional impact they are the stuff of which the hockey annals are made. It was after watching the clips that I began to wax nostalgic about the Ducks’ Disney days, and the realization of the holiday season dawned on me (the holidays are nothing if not a time to share stories).
Accordingly, I have decided to share my brief and extemporaneous recollection of that magical Stanley Cup spring, beginning today with the series — specifically game one — win over the Stars.
It had been an extraordinary playoff season, and in this case the definition of the word had been bifurcated into decidedly opposite extremes of the emotional spectrum. Extraordinary that the Ducks (nee Mighty Ducks, as they still were at the time) had swept the Red Wings, defending Cup champions. More extraordinary still that in doing so, Jean-Sebastien Giguere — my favorite Duck dating back to his major junior days in Halifax — had shut down a high-octane offense by stopping pucks at a record pace.
Extraordinarily upsetting, too, that the Colorado Avalanche had managed to forfeit a 3-1 series lead against the Minnesota Wild and find themselves eliminated early in (what would prove to be) Patrick Roy’s final season — Roy being my all-time favorite goaltender. It is a nearly inexplicable phenomenon to those who aren’t fans of sport to hope that one of your two favorite teams is eliminated ahead of schedule, making the choice of allegiance one beyond control. Thankfully, due to whatever mixture of complacency, arrogance and fatigue that had finished the Avalanche, the decision to throw my full support behind the Ducks had been made for me. [Note: The Ducks and Avs did meet in the 2006 playoffs, and it was Anaheim that did me the favor by swiftly and mercilessly destroying Colorado.]
And so it was, the second round began and I was certain that the Ducks had been the fortuitous recipients of beginner’s luck (insofar as Giguere could carry them), and that Dallas would quickly dash any delirious dreams of third round play. At the time, I was away from home on a school trip. Through some stroke of good fortune, the hotel room had a television and my friends were willing to put aside their allegiances and watch the Ducks game with me. Having tuned in well before midnight, we had no idea how many consecutive hours of hockey we were settling in to watch.
Fast forward to 3AM, a wakeup call looming in less than four hours (you didn’t think school trips were for sleeping in, did you?). The room of four, only three of us hockey fans, were beginning to wonder aloud if the game would ever end; being in the Atlantic timezone certainly wasn’t helping our perception of the game’s astronomical duration. It was then, after the fourth overtime period had ended, that common sense won over my friend and he called it quits. Ironically, this friend was as much a hockey fan as I, but he was seemingly giving in to the sensibilities of sleep. By this point, my sports-allergic friend had made a point of outlasting the game as a means of masochistic endurance. To the best of my recollective ability, I quote him: “Right now I just want to stay up and see how long this thing goes.” Point taken.
On the television screen, the remaining crowd in Dallas was doing its best to maintain what can only be called the sorriest wave I’ve ever seen at a sporting event. It was, however, difficult to fault the audience for its lack of energy at that point, because the play on the ice had grown sloppy and fatigued as well.
I can’t remember the exact time — every time I tell the story, I seem to settle on 3:30AM as the acceptable marking point — but it finally happened. It happened so quickly I almost missed it. Petr Sykora coasted into the slot, took a pass and fired a quick shot past Marty Turco into the Dallas goal. The event seemed to catch everybody (awake) by surprise, no one more than Turco. His expression looked crestfallen, to say the least. In the hotel room I raised my arms triumphantly, exhausted.
In total, I think I got about three hours of restless sleep that night. Breakfast was an unholy mixture of donuts and coffee, foods I am not wont to eat the other 364 mornings of the year. The rest of the series now plays out as a slideshow of scattered moments in my head — Giguere stopping Mike Modano with his skate blade, and Modano’s ensuing bewilderment; the cathartic celebration after the final seconds ticked off the clock in game six, the Ducks’ players looking as though they had been waiting the whole time to exhale — and it is wonderful, but nowhere near as affecting on my fan psyche as that first game.
Rarely do I find it fitting to use the word I am about to write. Truthfully, I rarely find it remotely appropriate as someone who endeavors to make a career of writing to think of using this word. But asked to sum up the entire experience of that playoff run, with the quintuple-overtime victory standing tall as the most vivid in the collection of those memories, I can think of only one word to use.
Epic.
