After being a topic of great debate at the outset of the season, the Ducks ultimately made their choice in net.  But was that choice the right one?

(BRUCE BENNETT/GETTY IMAGES)

It is remarkably alarming how quickly prosperity and luxury wash away to become much more loathsome adjectives – inadequacy, incompetency, ineptitude.  With a month left in the regular season, the Anaheim Ducks sit on the outside of the playoff picture looking in.

Entering the 2009-10 season, the Ducks looked to be a solid team on paper – not a frontline contender, but strong enough to be assured a playoff spot by almost every panelist and prognosticator attempting to divine the team’s fortunes.  Scoring was expected to increase thanks to some shrewd off-season dealings by Bob Murray, the heir apparent to Brian Burke’s GM throne after the latter took his show to Toronto last season.  The one glaring sore spot was an unfamiliar lack of superstars on the blueline, the ratio having been cut in half when Chris Pronger was traded to the Flyers.

Idealistic about the future after a surprising playoff run and with the team bearing the trademark resilience of one surviving well in a salary cap era, Murray had no reason to expect that the Ducks could not be fitted with the right parts and reinvent their style accordingly.  Once equally feared and loathed, the team underwent a profound and almost immediate fundamental shift in paradigm from the defensive to the offensive.  Its anchor and captain, Scott Niedermayer – comfortable and adept at both ends of the rink – no doubt helped facilitate the decision to retool on the fly.

The only potential area for concern (and one that perhaps should have raised a few more red flags) was coach Randy Carlyle, a retired Norris Trophy-winning defenseman, and his ability and willingness to tailor his existing coaching style to the new personnel.

What does any of this have to do with goaltending?  Like any machine, well-oiled or otherwise, the Ducks surprising success in 2008-09 hinged on the synergy of its individual components.  That is to say the team that had been performing below expectations finally started playing with a unity that made it more than the sum of its parts.  After a tumultuous season by Jean-Sebastien Giguere, the team finally handed over the reins of its goaltending job to Jonas Hiller, who supplanted the former in time to save the Ducks season.

Heading into camp last fall, however, the race was wide open and the Ducks were again entertaining a battle for top billing in net.  The ostensible hope was that the competition would breed success for at least one of the goaltenders, much as it had during the 2006-07 season when Giguere emphatically asserted his dominance in the Anaheim crease.  In a perfect world, the plan was for both goaltenders to play well, pushing each other to perform while simultaneously increasing their respective values on the trade market.

That is not what happened.

Things took a left turn

Things took a left turn somewhere along the way and the Ducks found themselves well down the road to goaltending perdition, so the story goes.  Hiller struggled mightily to display the immense promise teased to Ducks fans, and Giguere – without goaltending mentor and longtime friend Francois Allaire – did not rebound from his subpar 2008-09 season.

While the Ducks collectively faltered, the goaltending was not there to bail the team out.  The team did not galvanize around the realization that it was far better on paper than it had been performing on the ice, and the freefall down the Western Conference standings began.  On many occasions Carlyle’s stubborn persistence in abiding by his publicly-declared “win and you’re in” strategy backfired, as neither Hiller nor Giguere was given a chance to establish consistency.  There were tantalizing flashes of it, but every glimpse proved fleeting and Murray was left to ponder the imponderable: should he have traded a goaltender in the summer?

The short answer is a decidedly ambivalent maybe.  Murray’s lack of prescience precludes any expectation that he should have (or even could have) known that the competition between goalies would ultimately undermine his plan.  The practical upshot to dealing Hiller during the summer was that his value, then at an apex after his playoff success, could have brought in legitimately useful pieces to fill holes in the roster.  In dealing Giguere, Murray could have established incontrovertible confidence in Hiller that could have conceivably pushed him to familiar heights or better.  Murray can be forgiven for not wanting to roll the dice, because Hiller did not have a long-term contract in place and just as easily could have left Murray looking daft if he walked this year.

Establishing the rules of the game is only half the battle, and Murray seemingly forgot that the outcomes (beyond the possibility of Hiller jilting the Ducks and leaving them sans a starter) comprise the other half.  As general manager, it is solely his responsibility to ensure the team’s success through the decision-making process that determines personnel shifts.  Murray’s goal was to hold his hand close and play his cards when the best opportunity presented itself.  Instead, he ended up stalemating a zero-sum game that brought the Ducks no tangible return in exchange for a goalie two years removed from the Stanley Cup.

That’s not to say Murray made the wrong choice.  Hiller finally started to play to expectations, and in doing so sealed Giguere’s fate.  Though the evidence is relegated to an ultimately inconsequential footnote in the aftermath of the trade, it is not hard to see that once Carlyle realized the folly in swapping goaltenders with maddening consistency no matter the circumstance, Hiller was given an opportunity to succeed at every juncture Giguere was left to fail.

The most damning indictment in the case is Giguere’s last start as a member of the Ducks, a pathetic showing against the Washington Capitals: a road game played on the second of two nights against the best team in the Eastern Conference.  Why Giguere was given that start and not the arguably easier one the night before in Atlanta is up for interpretation, but looking back, it appears to be the final step in vindicating Murray’s decision to pull the trigger.

For better or for worse

For better or for worse, Jonas Hiller is the Ducks’ new starting goaltender.  His is a future that is bright and, not yet 28, it is entirely plausible that the best is still to come.  It is unfortunate that his coronation has come at a grievous cost to many Ducks fans.  The loss of Jean-Sebastien Giguere is as much a loss off the ice as it is on it.  Regularly lauded for his class and his active participation in community events, Giguere was the de-facto face of the Ducks franchise once Paul Kariya left.  As the last member of both Ducks playoff runs, Giguere represented an integral piece of Ducks history (both Mighty and not) and Anaheim fans should be –if they are not already – sad to see him leave under such circumstances.

It must be stated, however, that the circumstances were dictated by Giguere and his (well-earned) no-trade clause.  Fortunately, he and Murray were able to reach an accord that worked out for both sides and allowed Giguere to leave the Ducks in an reasonably amicable manner.  He has found shelter in Toronto under the watchful eye of Brian Burke, who out of either unwavering faith or maternal instinct harbors ex-Ducks personnel.  In that sense, Murray has effectively succeeded in finding resolution to a situation his lack of action originally devolved from a win-win to a zero-sum game.

What’s left now for the Ducks is to hope that Hiller is the real deal.  To be certain, there is very little to indicate Hiller cannot thrive under a heavy workload in Anaheim, and for a team envisaged with an offensive imperative, that is great news.  With a little luck and persistent consistency from Hiller, Bob Murray (or whoever is at the helm of Ducks management in the future) will not have to revisit the same conundrum when Hiller’s contract nears expiration.

Unless, of course, the Ducks find the next Jonas Hiller toiling in obscurity somewhere in Europe between now and then.