This post is the first in an ongoing series that I like to call: My All-time Teams. In each post, I will look at a team that has stood out in my eyes. They could have been one of the greatest teams of all time, they could’ve stunk up the joint like the ’08 Lions, it doesn’t matter, I loved cheering for them.
With the Anaheim Ducks recent success, or rather dominance of the Winnipeg Jets and Calgary Flames, I figure now would be as good a time as ever to bring up the 2002-03 Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.
Growing up a Maple Leafs fan, I’ve grown accustomed to the fact that the Buds are never playing after the first week of April, so I’ve got to find someone else to cheer for when playoff hockey comes around.
However, before 2003, the Leafs were all that I needed. The earliest memory I have as a Leafs fan dates back to 1999, watching the Chicago Blackhawks close out Maple Leaf Gardens by beating the Maple Leafs 6-2, and the ceremonies which followed. Some people may say “How on earth could you possibly remember that?”, well in case you didn’t know, Leafs fans haven’t exactly had many memorable moments to hang onto since 2004 (Most of them are seeing coaches and GMs get fired). So from what I could remember, here’s how the Leafs did before 2003:
1998-99 – 4th in the Eastern Conference (Playoffs) Beat Philadelphia 4-2 in 1st Round, Defeated Pittsburgh 4-2 in 2nd Round, Lost to Buffalo 4-1 in Eastern Conference Final
1999-00 – 3rd in the Eastern Conference (Playoffs/Northeast Division Champions) Defeated Ottawa 4-2 in 1st Round, Lost to New Jersey 4-2 in 2nd Round
2000-01 – 7th in the Eastern Conference (Playoffs) SWEPT Ottawa 4-0 in 1st Round, Lost to New Jersey 4-3 in 2nd Round
2001-02 – 4th in the Eastern Conference (Playoffs) Defeated New York Islanders 4-3 in 1st Round, Defeated Ottawa Senators 4-3 in 2nd Round, Lost to Carolina 4-2 in Eastern Conference Final
The Maple Leafs won at least one playoff series every year, and got to the conference finals twice in 4 years. That’s pretty darn good (compared to the current team). The next season, the Maple Leafs lost in 7 games to the Philadelphia Flyers in the opening round of the 2003 playoffs. Back in the early 2000s when people used MSN Messenger, Amanda Bynes wasn’t on every drug imaginable, and Hoobastank was still relevant, getting knocked out in the first round was viewed as a huge disappointment in Toronto, which demonstrates how bad the state of Toronto Sports has gotten that now we think simply getting into the playoffs is enough cause for a huge celebration.
So I had to find a new team to cheer on for the rest of the NHL post-season. And the good thing was that I didn’t have to look outside of my family to find one.
For two decades, my uncle, who lives in California, worked as the President of Physical Production for Walt Disney Studios and oversaw the production of more than 200 motion pictures including Armageddon, The Sixth Sense, Pearl Harbor, and The Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy to name a few. Of course he also had a part in producing The Mighty Ducks film series, which spawned the inception of an NHL Franchise, the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.
As I became more and more obsessed with the game of hockey, I eventually came across The Mighty Ducks movies and instantly fell in love with them. If you have not seen these movies, you need to stop what you’re doing immediately and watch The Mighty Ducks, D2 and D3. Literally drop everything and watch these movies; this is your #1 priority now. Nothing else matters.
Anyways, Walt Disney obviously owned the franchise at the time, and as soon as my Uncle found out I had been watching the movies religiously, he sent me a Mighty Ducks jersey signed by the entire team in the summer of 2002.
At the time, the Ducks didn’t get a lot of coverage in Toronto because they didn’t come to town often, and frankly, they weren’t a very good hockey team. The only player I knew on the team was Paul Kariya, but I was still thrilled knowing I just got the autograph of a perennial NHL All-Star and Olympic Gold Medallist. When I went down to California later that year, I also got to see the Mighty Ducks in action, a game in which they defeated the Nashville Predators 3-0, and it was at that moment I adopted them as my second team.
Kariya was my favourite Duck, he was the Captain, a Canadian hero, and a winger who certainly wasn’t the biggest guy out there, but made up for it with blistering speed and a cannon for a shot. Besides Kariya, The Mighty Ducks still had one of the NHL’s all-time great passers in Adam Oates, the always reliable Keith Carney and Sandis Ozolinsh on Defense and scoring support from former Stanley Cup winner Petr Sykora and Thunder Bay’s very own, Steve Rucchin.
You want to talk about a well-coached team? Look no further than the ’03 Ducks. The head coach of the team, in his first season behind the bench of an NHL team, was Mike Babcock. His assistant just happened to be future Jack Adams winner Paul MacLean, and his 4th line winger was Stanley Cup AND Jack Adams award-winning Coach, Dan Bylsma. This team was just chock full of leadership and character and all sorts of intangibles.
But you can’t bring up this Mighty Ducks team without mentioning their goalie, the man who stole the show and took the NHL by storm in the 2003 playoffs. The last Hartford Whaler to play in the NHL. The first goalie in Maple Leafs History to record shutouts in his first two games in the Blue and White. The one, the only, Jean-Sebastien Giguere.
The Mighty Ducks snuck into the first round of the playoffs that season, earning the 7th seed and a matchup with the defending Stanley Cup Champions, the Detroit Red Wings. The Red Wings were dominant and boasted a lineup consisting of 6 Hall of Famers (Hull, Shanahan, Larionov, Chelios, Robitaille, and Yzerman) and 5 more players who are also likely be inducted someday (Fedorov, Lidstrom, Datsyuk, Zetterberg, and Joseph). Absolutely no one gave them a chance; well, no human anyway.
Anaheim stunned Detroit in their own barn, stealing game 1 in overtime and scoring 3 times in the final 10 minutes of game 2 to take a 2-0 series lead back to the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim. After J-S Giguere stood on his head in game 3, it was Steve Rucchin who became the Overtime Hero.
When everyone thought the Wings were going to sweep the Ducks, it turned out to be the complete opposite. They became a team to be reckoned with, and though the top-seeded Dallas Stars were heavily favoured to beat the Ducks, it was clear to the rest of the league that Anaheim should not be taken lightly.
The Anaheim-Dallas series became memorable after only one game, because that game went to 5 overtimes, or 80 minutes and 48 seconds beyond regulation, making it the 4th longest game in NHL History. Petr Sykora, one of Anaheim’s big offseason acquisitions, became the hero, and though he didn’t know it yet, he had essentially won the series for Anaheim, because there really is nothing more demoralizing then coming out on the losing end of a game that lasts longer than 7 full periods.
The Ducks would soar past the Stars in six, only to run into another underdog in the Western Conference Final, the Minnesota Wild. Giguere was basically a brick wall in the 2003 playoffs, and the Wild learned this the hard way. Nothing could get by him. Nothing. Against Minnesota, the soft-spoken goalie from Blainville, Quebec shut out in the Wild in the first three games of the series, and it wasn’t until game 4 that Andrew Brunette finally slipped one by Jiggy. Giguere held the Wild to one goal in 4 games. An all-time best-of-seven series low as the Mighty Ducks swept the Wild.
The Mighty Ducks were going to play for the Stanley Cup! But there was still one team left that they had to dispose of if they wanted to be crowned the Champions, those blasted New Jersey Devils. It would be the Ducks’ (Rob) Niedermayer vs. the Devils’ (Scott) Niedermayer for the Stanley Cup, and Sykora, Oleg Tverdovsky, and Jeff Friesen would all be going up against their old teams.
At this point, no one was hoping the Devils would win. They’d already won twice, both in 1995 and 2000 over the Detroit Red Wings and Dallas Stars respectively, and the way the Devils played was literally killing the game of hockey. (I also wasn’t a big fan, seeing as they had eliminated the Leafs from the playoffs the two seasons prior).
New Jersey used a neutral zone trap system, a mind-numbingly boring defensive style of hockey that caused fans to fall asleep midway through the first period. Every game the Devils would sit back and wait for the other team to make a mistake, New Jersey would capitalize, score a goal or two, and then play conservative defensive hockey for the rest of the game. It was boring, frustrating, infuriating, and yet it almost always worked.
The first two games of the series were more dull than watching paint dry, as the Devils cruised to 3-0 wins in both. Games 3 and 4 weren’t much better, but ended in dramatic finish, with the late Ruslan Salei, who passed away in the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl airplane disaster, smashing home the winner in Game 3 and Steve “Stumpy” Thomas, the NHL veteran of 19 years in his first Stanley Cup final, evening the series at 2.
After the Devils took game 5 in New Jersey, the series headed back to California. Now to me, Game 6 is what everyone will remember this series for, because of one play.
I don’t know about you, but “Off the Floor, On the Board” ranks as one of the greatest Stanley Cup Final Moments of all time in my books. Scott Stevens absolutely annihilated Kariya in open ice, as he was known to do to players from time to time, just ask Eric Lindros. Kariya was wasted, knocked completely unconscious, and lying motionless on the ice in front of thousands at the game and millions watching at home.
Every single time I’ve re-watched that clip I get chills. Kariya was pretty much dead 10 minutes earlier, and he comes back and lifts the roof off of the Arrowhead Pond, in a town where ice hockey is an afterthought. I still don’t know what’s better about that goal; the perfectly placed shot by Kariya, or the fact that Martin Brodeur, the Vezina winner in 2002-03, has absolutely no clue what just happened.
Sadly, the Ducks season did not have a Hollywood Movie Ending. Unlikely hero Mike Rupp had 2 goals in Game 7, as the Devils won their 3rd Stanley Cup in 9 years, beating the Ducks by a score of, you guessed it, 3 to nothing. Despite the loss, Jean-Sebastian Giguere took home the Conn Smythe, and rightfully so, with a .945 save percentage and a Goals Against average under 2, nobody was better than Jiggy. While I was happy for Jiggy, it still saddened me to see this team of destiny not receive its storybook conclusion, and I’ve never wanted another NHL team to win as badly as I wanted the 2003 Mighty Ducks of Anaheim to.
Epilogue:
Watching the Devils win another Cup and their incredibly boring style of play emerge victorious, The NHL decided to implement several rule changes a few years later to try and increase scoring while discouraging.
In the offseason, the Ducks opted not to pick up Kariya’s $10 million option, though it was believed he would re-sign with the team. In despicable fashion, Kariya left the Mighty Ducks to sign with the Colorado Avalanche for a massive one year $11.2 Million contract.
Wait no, I misread that. Kariya actually signed for… $1.2 million! Why would Kariya take an $8.8 Million paycut? He’s one of the best players in the league! He at least deserves better than a below average salary!
His Reason: He wanted to reunite with old teammate Teemu Selanne, and believed Colorado was his best chance at a Cup (even though he was one game away from it in Anaheim). The Avs were stacked that year, but were disappointingly eliminated in the 2nd round, and Kariya had one of his worst seasons as a pro. After the lockout, Kariya would rebound in Nashville but several injuries eventually forced him to retire in 2011.
Despite losing Kariya, the Mighty Ducks scouting department did fairly well at the NHL Draft that year, picking Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf. You may have heard of them.
The next season, the Mighty Ducks signed Russian Superstar Sergei Fedorov to replace Kariya but still missed the playoffs altogether.
Mike Babcock ended up leaving for Detroit after the lockout and became the NHL Coach that every single team currently wishes they had, leading the Red Wings to the playoffs every season he’s been in Detroit, and back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals in 2008 and 2009, winning in ’08.
In 2005 Disney sold the franchise to the Samueli family, and the Mighty Ducks hired Brian Burke to be their new General Manager and Randy Carlyle to be their next head coach. Burke signed Scott Niedermayer, Rob’s brother, to be the Mighty Ducks’ new Captain, brought back fan favourite Teemu Selanne and shipped Fedorov to Columbus for Defensemen Francois Beauchemin. Anaheim’s young stars, Getzlaf, Perry and Chris Kunitz took the team to the Western Conference Finals where they fell to the Cinderella story Edmonton Oilers.
The following season, the Ducks traded for star defenseman Chris Pronger to improve their Blue-line depth even further. The franchise also changed its name to simply “The Anaheim Ducks”, and completely redesigned the team’s colour scheme, now using orange, black, gold and white. Every single person still wishes they had never made these changes.
The no-longer ‘Mighty’ Ducks went on to have their mightiest season in Franchise History, going undefeated in regulation for the first 16 games of the season and winning their first Pacific Division title. After rolling through the Minnesota Wild and Vancouver Cauncks, they faced a familiar foe, the Detroit Red Wings.
I was lucky enough to be in attendance for Game 4 of the Western Conference Final, the only NHL playoff game I’ve ever been to (THANKS TORONTO). At that point the Red Wings had a 2-1 lead, so it was essentially a must-win game for Anaheim as the series headed back to Detroit for game 5.
The game was an incredible experience, highlighted by Ryan Getzlaf’s game-winner in the 3rd period that got everyone out of their seats. Anaheim went on to win the game 5-3 and take the next two against the Red Wings to head off to the their second Stanley Cup Final.
This time around, the Ducks weren’t the ones suffering the heartbreak, as they defeated the Ottawa Senators in 5, to win their first ever Stanley Cup.
nolancattell 