One goaltender was great. Another was even better.
Sunday night at the Honda Center, the final score was 3-0 in favor of the Anaheim Ducks. The Anaheim goalie was great in his shutout performance. His Calgary counterpart, Karri Ramo, was brilliant.
It was a battle between two goalies, both relatively new to this whole playoff thing, but both quite excellent at it as well. In the end, Frederik Andersen out-dueled the playoff rookie in Ramo, helping the Ducks to a 2-0 lead in the Western Conference Semifinals.
In his Stanley Cup Playoff debut, the Flames' netminder was the best player on the ice, but the help in front of him was minimal through the first 20 minutes. One perfectly-placed pass by Anaheim's Ryan Kesler to Matt Beleskey was enough to inflict damage. But the damage was minimal, as the one goal score held until the third period, and it held because Karri Ramo stood on his head to make 19 saves.
Had it not been for Ramo, it could have very likely been 8-0 after that first period.
"The first 20 minutes we looked like 20 strangers out there that we just met for the first time," said Flames' coach Bob Hartley. "They were all over us. We had a few bad pinches, a few bad reads and they're a team that will make you pay whenever you give them outnumbered situations. They're so good that usually they're going to score some goals. Like I said before, Karri was the difference in the first period."
Even past the first period, Ramo was still the difference. Forced to protect a one-goal lead, he did so until 11 minutes and 15 seconds into the third period. Defenseman Hampus Lindholm showcased good skill and good decision-making when he jumped into a play and went high glove-side on Ramo, a move he had scored with once already this season.
Two blunders on an otherwise stellar performance.
"I thought Ramo was better than good," said Ducks' coach Bruce Boudreau. "When you play against a goalie that's playing like that, you start to really worry. Because you have to make sure that you're perfect."
Andersen, however, was perfect, walking away with his first-career postseason shutout.
"We weren't perfect but Freddie was there when we needed him to be there," Boudreau said. "They were coming really hard in the third period until we got that one goal. I don't think by any chance or stretch of the imagination was this a dominant effort by us."
Prepared for Calgary's best game yet, Andersen was stalwart in the net. But it was the confidence he exuded and the calm he kept that was arguably just as important as his 30 saves. With a 1-0 score in the third period, the tension was palpable and growing by the minute. But the Ducks looked to their seemingly emotionless goalie.
If he wasn't panicked, they weren't either.
"That's why he's such a good goalie," said Ducks' center Ryan Kesler. "Even when we don't have our game and we're scrambling, he calms us all down by the way he plays. He's not scramble-y in there. He just puts his body in front of the puck and calms everything down for us."
The Ducks have now won six-straight games in the postseason, a feat that Anaheim has now accomplished three times in franchise history (2003 and 2006). In the last 25 years, only five other teams have ever started the postseason 6-0. Only the Ducks have done it twice.
At the end of the night, Calgary looked less over-matched than they had in the first four periods of this series. As Boudreau pointed out, the last 40 minutes may not have been dominant for the Ducks. But as the series heads to Calgary, the gap still appears to be a large one for the Flames to have to bridge.
