Finally time for Giroux to take a bow
PHILADELPHIA » Claude Giroux had his head bowed on the bench Saturday, but not for the usual reasons.
There was nothing to be down about now, no reason to curse his bad luck, nothing to silently burn about, as he had been knocked down, cursed and burned so often before.
Not this time, not after a 5-0 victory that clinched a playoff spot, had a Flyers-record home crowd of 20,028 on their feet in glee, and produced waves of MVP! chants beautifully crashing down on the helmeted head of the 30-yearold Giroux.
Bowed in sweet relief, unbroken in his faith in the team he had led back from a 10-game losing streak in November can do magical things in the spring.
“We were losing games, but we were playing the right way,” Giroux said. “We were playing as a team and we just couldn’t find a way to get it done at the end of games. We lost 10, but we lost five in overtime or shootouts, so we were right there. We just kept pressing.
“It’s actually crazy how you lose 10 in a row like that and, not blaming you guys, but you’ve got the media kind of in your head, but no one’s pointing fingers. Everybody’s just kind of focusing on their job and it just shows a lot in this group.”
Giroux had been close as a young player, ending his first full Flyers season in 2010 by scoring on a shootout attempt against Henrik Lundqvist to help lift a team of experienced but limited Flyers to an unlikely last-day victory over the Rangers that gave a the No. 8 playoff seed. They didn’t play like it.
Only a team that would nearly create a dynasty would beat them in the playoffs that year, the Chicago Blackhawks winning the first of three Stanley Cups they’d compile over a six-year term.
Over that time, Giroux grew into his anticipated role of team leader in Philadelphia, but the Flyers haven’t won more than one playoff series in any year since then. Now they try again.
Once again this time, it would take all 82 games to earn a playoff spot.
Once again, they enter as a lower seed not expected to tour the latter days of hockey’s spring marathon.
But then you saw Claude Giroux in his most glorious of career poses Saturday, having scored three goals for his first regular season hat trick through 738 career games, saving it for a day in which he personally secured a playoff spot for his team, boosted his goal total to 34, his points total to 102 — second best in the league — and thuys made a stirring, nationally televised statement for his MVP candidacy.
The Flyers are what they are. Young and somewhat vulnerable on defense, with a goalie in Brian Elliott still trying to fully find his way back after surgery about seven weeks ago.
Yet Claude Giroux is playing the game at such a high level, it’s difficult not to think that anything is possible for this Flyers team.
“When you wake up for a game like this, you want to try to not get too jacked up,” Giroux said. “You want to be in control of what you do. We did a good job of not getting too excited and doing our job.”
They started slow but did get an early lead when Ivan Provorov chestbumped the puck past Lundqvist. They played with caution while these woefully undermanned, rebuilding Rangers didn’t so much as hint of being a danger to the Flyers’ final playoff push.
Then Giroux and his top line simply took the game over. He fired a quick shot on a power play that eluded Lundqvist at 12:24 of the second for a 2-0 lead. He raised his arms when linemate Michael Raffl scored at 17:53 for 3-0, and while Raffl’s goal was being announced, he threw a pass at Giroux, who promptly ripped it home all of six seconds after the Raffl goal.
The roar hit a high point then, took a second intermission, then hit a crescendo midway through the third period, when Giroux caught a post-pattern pass from Travis Sanheim and went on a clean breakaway.
There never really was much doubt that he was going to finish that one in style.
While the hats were being cleared away, the arena’s Big Screen cameras were catching him in victory mode on the bench, a touch of silent reflection, mixed with banter from Raffl and Travis Konecny.
“I think the fans were great,” Giroux said. “I tried to kind of relax and I was pretty uncomfortable there when I was on the Big Screen. But I had Rafi there beside me, telling me to get up.”
He rose, offered a quick wave, then sat back down to bow beneath the roar, soaking it all in.
A player refusing to be broken. Overlooked time and again by the Canadian hockey geniuses selecting Olympic teams. Left behind time and again when his elite peers collected individual honors, and more importantly, championship hardware. Finishing another disappointing one-and-done playoff try two years ago with aggravating pain that led to hip and abdominal surgery the next month.
Little did he realize the toll it would take on essentially all of his next season.
Little did the critics who saw him toil through that awful 2016-17 season realize what he still had in store.
“G is an unbelievable player, he deserves everything he’s getting this year and definitely deserves to be in the MVP conversation,” linemate Sean Couturier said. “I don’t know how some people don’t put him there. It’s crazy, he steps up his game every time the game is bigger. That’s the kind of guy he is, it shows his character and he’s our leader.
“I think we saw early on (in training camp) that he felt great and he was back looking good and feeling healthy again. We were excited about that, he was excited, and it just (brought) that energy around the team. He did a great job for us this year again.”
So now it’s time to take a bow.