Again, Giroux falls short of the goal
With a chance to win a series in 2012, Claude Giroux made a demand, then a statement.
“I want that first shift,” he said. He would take it from there. He would hit. He would pass. He would skate with speed and power. He would drop Sidney Crosby. He would score.
And when the Flyers would win, Peter Laviolette would sting him with what would prove to be an unsightly tattoo.
“When the best player in the world tells you that,” the Flyers’ coach at the time said, “it tells you everything you need to know about Claude Giroux.”
Eight years later, there the Flyers were Saturday night, in Toronto and facing a Game 7 against an Islanders team that had outshot them, 51-37, in Game 6. For that, there would be no telling who said what in a bubbled-up dressing room. Besides, for Giroux, and for the Flyers, the deadline had long passed to make sure the results mattered more than the promises.
“We really don’t talk that much about winning or losing,” Alain Vigneault said earlier in the afternoon. “We talk a lot more about the process
and what needs to be done on the ice in certain areas against certain players. We focus on that. We try to make sure our players are focused in the right areas, on doing the right things. Usually if you do that and you back that up with 100 percent of what you have, it makes for a great game.
“That’s what we’re going to see.”
Vigneault didn’t start Giroux Saturday, successfully allowing Oskar Lindblom, Nate Thompson and Nicolas Aube-Kubel to produce instant mayhem. But the captain would be on quickly, along with Jake Voracek and Sean Couturier, a trio of franchise legends. And for that one shift, and then his next one, and then for whenever he was on the ice early, Giroux was that 2012 player again. He was speeding, creating shots, winning big faceoffs. He wasn’t the best player in the world, for he never was. But for that one blast, for those few shifts of brilliance, for that period that had a chance to underline his career greatness, he was the best player on that surface.
In so many ways, though, it was too late, too many years and too little postseason success after that Pittsburgh series. And it was too deep into a series in which the Flyers had to dig out of too many holes.
Giroux never would score, not that he was alone, and the Islanders would skate into the Final Four with a convincing 4-0 victory. In 13 playoff games, Giroux would score once. For that, at age 32, he will hear about it, and for a long time.
The Flyers have done plenty to indicate that they are on the right arc. Coaching from both his gut and his lifetime of hockey experience, Vigneault mined more from his team than the know-italls projected. The many first-round draft choices stocked for years by Paul Holmgren and Ron Hextall began to play at a championship-contention level. Carter Hart was often spectacular, and, at age 22, certainly will benefit from two rounds of multiple-overtime postsesaon education. Chuck Fletcher showed an eye for talent. And the Flyers’ refusal to quit, down 3-1 in the series, was more impressive than the fact that they were out-executed in Game 7.
But if there is destined to be an issue in an offseason that could last for a while, it will be Giroux, who was pretty good in a series where pretty good was not enough. Even if it is cliché that a hockey captain is expected to invite his teammates onto his back for a long postseason ride, the occasional big playoff goal is not an unreasonable demand. And Giroux has scored two postseason goals since 2014.
“Frustration is high right now,” Giroux said. “We are going in the right direction. We have to learn from this and move forward.”
In the scant hours before 7, there was some push from the Zoom-asphere for Vigneault to praise Giroux for his 24for-39 faceoff success in Game 6. The coach’s response was not unlike a baseball manager being asked about his powerhitter’s ability to draw a walk.
“More faceoffs, right side and left side,” was Vigneault’s stream-of-consciousness reply. “Obviously at this time of the year, goaltending, I used the ‘big boy pants’ analogy the other day. Top players have got to be your best and they’ve got to come through for you.
“We have a Game 7 in front of us. We know we’re going to have to play our best game of the series.”
Though Vigneault earned so much mileage out of his plea for veterans to score that the Flyers’ marketing department must have been rush-ordering over-sized orange drawers for online sale, it was a wail he had been unloading all season. He’d said as much so often about his highest-paid players that he was probably shocked that it resonated as much as it did. Then again, September playoff hockey has its own rules.
But Voracek didn’t score a goal in the seven Islanders games. Giroux had one. Couturier, who only played five-plus games, had two goals. None of it was enough for a team for which going on a power play was a momentum drag.
“We’ve got to figure out the power plays,” Giroux said before the game. “I’ll be the first one to blame myself.”
That was a generous offer. But a captain who had the opportunity and the early energy Saturday to solidify his legend, instead had another goal free game. That means when it’s his turn to absorb blame, he will have company.