Ryan Getzlaf: ‘I didn’t play good enough to win’

For the third straight season, the captain of the Ducks has walked away from his season disappointed.  Will this be the longest offseason of his career?

When the Anaheim Ducks headed into Chicago before Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals, they held a 3-2 series lead and had to feel good about their chances of winning.

After all, their goaltender, Frederik Andersen, had just played his worst game of the playoffs, single-handedly allowing the Blackhawks to tie a game that Anaheim had complete control of – and the Ducks still won Game 5!  How could they not feel like they were going to emerge from the series as the team that would represent the Western Conference in the Stanley Cup Finals?

Of course, we all know what happened: Anaheim got pasted by the Blackhawks, 5-2, in Game 6, and the Ducks’ captain Ryan Getzlaf placed the blame squarely on his shoulders:

Every Anaheim Ducks fan knew what was going to happen next: when the team captain publicly takes the blame for a loss and describes his play as terrible, you expect him to take over the next game and will his team to win, right?

Well . . .

Following yet another Game 7 loss, Getzalf flat-out said, “I’m not going to say I played great.  I didn’t play good enough to win.”  While I appreciate the honesty (and cringe at the grammar!), it’s pretty clear that the question all of us are asking is, why?   Knowing that he played god-awful hockey in Game 6, why did Getzlaf come out and drop another bomb on the ice?

It’s a tough question to answer, one that only Getzlaf himself can answer – and maybe even he doesn’t have an explanation for it.  After all, it’s not like he had been invisible throughout these playoffs:

Sure, Getzlaf was not scoring a lot of goals, but he was certainly creating goals for his teammates, and playing lock-down defense, to boot.

Sadly, when his team needed him to continue doing both of those things, he wound up unable to provide either.   Don’t forget, Getzlaf was matched up with Chicago’s captain, Jonathan Toews, throughout all of Game 7.   Toews’ night?  Two goals on two shots and a +1 rating.

Getzlaf?  One assist, a -1 rating, and the knowledge that he allowed his defensive responsibility to burn him, twice.

Could this loss be the start of a superhuman 2015-2016 effort from Ryan Getzlaf?  We can only hope so.  I respect the hell out of Getzlaf, and would love to see him hoist Lord Stanley’s Cup once again.  Still, we may be on the brink of realizing that his window of opportunity to do so is nearly closed – could this have been his last good shot at getting back to the promised land?

No matter the answer to that, it will surely be a long offseason for the captain.

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