The Year of the Backup

This year, we don't have just any garden variety backups; we've got a Cam Ward, a Ray Emery and even an Ilya Brzygalov for a more exotic flavor.

The man that says that winning the Stanley Cup is all about goaltending and special teams certainly couldn't have been considering these cast of characters.

We've left the likes of Mikka Kiprusoff and Marty Turco behind us after Round One and understudies rule the day. There are some asterisks among the final eight backstoppers in the tournament.

Colorado's Jose Theodore was a Vezina and Hart Trophy winner back in the day, but he WAS beat out by a Frenchman, Cristobal Huet.

Edmonton's Dwayne Roloson was a co-No.1 with Manny Fernandez in Minny, but that was before a horrendous regular season riveted him to the bench and prompted a gamble (and a winning one at that) by Oilers' GM Kevin Lowe.

Now let's be fair to the kid in Carolina: Ward was a first round draft choice by the Canes in 2002 and is expected to be a number one goaltender. But not this year, that role was supposed to be held by Martin (Baby Food) Gerber.

Gerber, who ironically played backup to J.S. Giguere (who now back ups Bryzgalov) during the Mighty Ducks 2003 Finals run, had a strong Olympic experience and was the man on Tobacco Road as the second season started. Funny what two first round losses to a seventh seeded Montreal Canadiens will do.

Canes' head coach Peter Laviolette showed no patience with Gerber and turned to young Mister Ward to swing the momentum, even though Ward was the official loser in Game 2. You can say it was it his stellar play that righted the ship but in the next breath you could make the argument that the Carolina man-to-man superiority just wore the upset minded Habs down.

A better indication of the young goaltender's talent will be after the New Jersey series. He'll face a red hot team that surprised everyone with dangerous offensive talent in their sweep of the hated New York Rangers. With the Canes holding serve against the Devs, Laviolette may be asking Ward just not to lose the series. The Devils' spirit have may been crushed after Game 2, letting in a tying goal with :04 to go and then losing it early in OT off a funky bounce that got by Brodeur.

Bryzgalov's story is far different. The Russian netminder rarely got a game, appearing in only 31 games as the Ducks flew past the Western Conference pack to finish sixth overall. Giguere, who had been slowed with injuries earlier in the year, had hit his stride down the stretch as well and Coach Randy Carlyle had hopes of a repeat performance of Giguere's Conn Smythe's post season in 2003.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Finals, Giguere's bothersome hips made him a no-go and there was young Ilya in goal for Game 1 in Calgary. This goalie had the great fortune of having the soon-to-be Norris winning defenseman Scott Niedermayer in front of him. He had GREATER fortune in facing a Calgary team that was favored but had all of one (1) goal scorer, Captain Jarome Iginla.

We won't dump on the Flames too much because they had the series destiny in their hands but failed to close out Anaheim in Game 6. With that said, when you lose a Game 7 at home in front of rabid fans and get shut out, a) you don't deserve to go on and b) you weren't that good to begin with.

Then there's Ray Emery, the least known of all the backups, he big and rangy and 23 years old.

After Dominik Hasek came up with a predictable season ending groin injury, this cat sat in his rocking chair watching the most talented team in the NHL do its thing. So as the second season got rolling, his numbers looked great but no one knew how he would perform under pressure.

Emery got a mulligan in the first round by playing a Tampa Bay Lightning team that arguably had the worst goaltending of the sixteen teams that made the tournament. The Sens finally got a reasonable match with the Buffalo Sabres, who had operated under the radar screen all year.

Buffalo had come off a physical six game series with the Philadelphia Flyers, so one would think they would have needed to catch their collective breaths in Game 1.

Or not.

Seven goals later, the Sabres had an upset overtime win fashioned in a 1980's Edmonton Oilers vintage. I'm thinking that if you told Ottawa Coach Bryan Murray his team would score six goals in the opener, he'd be up 1-0.

When Sabres' backstop Ryan Miller (surprise, not a backup) outplayed Emery in a 2-1 Buffalo win to send the Sabres home up 2-0, it made Ottawa fans long for the days of Patrick Lalime.

Perhaps I'm exaggerating a tad bit, but you get the picture. What's not an exaggeration is that Murray may roll the dice in Game 3 and try Mike Morrison to fashion a victory hard by the banks of Lake Erie. Imagine a March waiver pickup saving the day in the Canadian capital.

While a Russian displaced a Quebecois in Anaheim, a few hundred miles north, a Russian was displaced by a Finn.

Veska Toskala was nothing more than an afterthought after Evgeni Nabokov signed a big money deal in the South Bay. The Russian keeper has had an up and down carrier, some great years, some not so great years.

Remember than the Sharks forsook the aforementioned Kiprusoff in favor of Nabokov so when he and the rest of the Sharks stumbled out of the gate. With nothing to lose, Sharks' head man Ron Wilson spun the wheel and made the deal, electing to go with Toskala, a netminder that scouting report says is a number two goalie.

So much for scouting reports, Toskala caught fire along with his teammates and Toskala bested Nashville's Chris Mason in a first round backup tête-à-tête. Even with a guy named Veska between the pipes, San Jose stands as our favorite to escape the West.
 

Dennis Bernstein, the man behind SCORE! Media, is a columnist for TheFourthPeriod.com and the Los Angeles Correspondent for The Fourth Period Magazine.