Ducks Gameday -- The Ephemeral Brilliance of J.S. Luigiguere

Anaheim Ducks (24-23-7, 13th in west) at Tampa Bay Lightning (22-20-10, t-11th in east), 4:30 pm
Anaheim Calling for feathers, Raw Charge for electrons.

This is probably irrelevant to tonight's game, and I've already shared some of these numbers in the comments of the last post, but I figured I'd continue the Super Parrio storyline and talk about another player who's trying to avoid Donkey Carlyle's barrels and fight his way into the everyday Ducks lineup:

J.S. Luigiguere.

Of course Luigiguere is having a rotten season: outside of a two-week stretch between Nov. 23 and Dec. 8, Giguere hasn't picked up a win this season.  Perhaps the most shocking thing about Giguere's season, though, is his period splits; before the forty-minute mark he puts up excellent numbers.  After the forty-minute mark he's horrible:

Giguere has allowed more third period goals than first-and-second periods combined, and a lot of games it's cost the Ducks some fairly-sure standings points; other games it's put some contestable standings points out of reach.  Now to be fair, I'm not going to solely blame Giguere for this third-period deterioration; Wednesday's Washington game showed an example of a team falling apart in front of Jiggy from the start of the third period -- why that perpetually seems to happen for Jiggy is up for debate.

The irony is that Giguere is a postseason legend specifically for his end-of-game heroics; the guy is 12-1 in career playoff OT games, having allowed but one goal in more than 250 minutes of overtime.  But most of that heroism is years ago now -- these days the lesson is to beware of any optimism Giguere gives you through 40 minutes.

Prediction:  I won't be around for game comments today; I'm DVRing the game for late night viewing at my Caprica new-episode party.  But with three losses on this road trip so far, I think it's time I went back to an old good-luck charm, one that's recently worked on the Bruins, Flames, and Sabres.  Ducks won all three of those games and scored 4+ goals each time; let's hope it can happen again. 

I had to use a blue lightning bolt to avoid yellow-on-yellow.  Now it's blue-on-blue.

Webbed foot by Koivu.

Go Ducks.