Giguere: Slump wasn't as bad as it seemed.
While Jonas Hiller was outplaying Jean-Sebastien Giguere, and the trade deadline was approaching, and the Ducks weren't winning, and the GM was threatening to tear the roster down and rebuild ... Giguere remembered to breathe.
His father, Claude, passed away in December amidst a span in which the goaltender (not coincidentally) won just twice in a span of nine starts. Randy Carlyle informally handed the No. 1 job to Hiller, who played all but 16 minutes in eight consecutive games.
Finally lifted off the bench Thursday in Nashville, Giguere looked solid stopping 30-of-33 shots. The Ducks lost, but Giguere earned another start Saturday in Calgary, which nearly resulted in a shutout.
"The whole game was a good building block for me," he said of Sunday's win. "Hopefully it's going to give me some confidence, some energy. Hopefully I can bottle the way I was feeling and take it into the next game."
So is the slump over? On paper, it was the worst in his tenure as the Ducks' starter, but maybe Giguere didn't need to turn a complete corner so much as veer in a positive direction.
As for possibly getting the shutout Saturday, "I was worried about getting the win, and that's all that mattered. Shutouts are team things, really not important.
"I'm pretty happy with the energy I had, the way I was feeling the puck, the way the puck hit me. All together, it was also very nice to get a big win in Calgary."
About J.P.
J.P. Hoornstra has been covering the Anaheim Ducks since 2007. Eight months after the University of Wisconsin won its third NCAA hockey championship, he was born in a frigid Madison winter. He betrayed his blue-blooded beginnings by graduating from UCLA in 2003, and welcomes any and all dialogue on the finer points of hockey.
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