  Philadelphia Flyers goalie Michael Leighton is deep in thoughts during practice in United Center in Chicago, May 30, 2010. (Alex Urosevic/QMI Agency)
|
CHICAGO — Michael Leighton woke up Sunday morning, checked his pulse, watched some video, and saw little wrong.
Clearly, to play goal for the Philadelphia Flyers, or maybe to bounce around as much as he has, you have to be a touch delusional, myopic, optimistic and completely naive.
“I didn’t let in any really bad goals,” Leighton said with a straight face after giving up five before being yanked in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup final on Saturday night. “The way I look at it. I didn’t make some big saves. That’s pretty much what it came down to. Every good scoring chance they had, they scored ... There’s one or two that I was mad at myself for what I did.”
Just like us, until Sunday afternoon, Leighton had not been told who will be starting in Game 2 on Monday night at the United Center. He now knows it is him.
For reasons known only to coach Peter Laviolette, he would not name his starting goaltending in his afternoon Cup press conference.
“Let me start this press conference by saying we will keep everything internal with regards to lineups, lineup changes, lines, goaltenders, anything that’s internal. But thank you for asking,” said Laviolette.
Then he broke his own rule a few hours later, when the Flyers’ PR staff announced that Leighton would be the starting goaltender.
Intrigue aside, it is something of a first for Laviolette as the Flyers coach. Since he was hired back in December, he hasn’t had to determine who played in goal. Most nights, he had no choice. He had only one goalie standing.
For Monday’s Game 2, he had a real decision to make. Leighton bombed in Game 1, mercifully being relieved of his duties after allowing five goals on about seven scoring chances by Chicago. By anyone’s standards, this was lousy goaltending.
And when the veteran Brian Boucher, he of the two bad knees, came in and played reasonably well, there was suddenly, for Laviolette, a choice.
The coach has been this route before in the Stanley Cup playoffs. While most Cups are won by one goalie, Laviolette won his only championship using both Martin Gerber and Cam Ward in the Carolina nets.
Now he has something along the lines of Gerber and Gerber-lite for the underdog Flyers. It is a challenge, his challenge, to win with spare parts from the NHL’s goaltending scrap heap.
Leighton, who looked nervous in Game 1, claims he wasn’t, even though he appeared jumpy on just about every shot.
“I’m just going to approach this the same way I did last game,” he said, which is hardly re-assuring. “I try not to think about what happened last night.”
With any kind of reasonable goaltending, the Flyers win Game 1. They scored five goals on the road. They didn’t take any penalties. They quieted the Chicago crowd. They held the vaunted Patrick Kane-Jonathan Toews line to nothing. They got the favourable matchups with Chris Pronger playing 32 minutes. They had three leads and couldn’t hold any of them.
Somewhere, they needed a save or two to make a difference. Now they need a comeback from Leighton — whose whole life has been about comebacks — or a comeback from Boucher, who is on a stage beyond his ordinary capabilities.
The feeling around, even before it became official, was that Leighton would get the start. His teammates seem to want that, seem to believe in him.
“For a guy that’s had to go through what he’s done through, I think he shows his perseverance, his character, that he’s still here, still fighting” said Flyers’ Danny Briere, a four-point man in Game 1. “And he still wants to make a name for himself.”
No matter what happens this series, Leighton will make a name for himself. Just what kind of name is yet to be determined.
