ANAHEIM — The game was lost, but there was still time for another dash down the ice, with the puck on his stick and his linemates racing to keep up with him and the fans edging forward in their seats and the opposing goaltender wondering what Ryan Getzlaf had running through his mind.
Getzlaf accepted a pass from Ducks teammate Troy Terry and suddenly he was in full flight, going as fast as his 36-year-old legs would carrying him down the center of the ice as he entered the attacking zone. In a few strides, Getzlaf whipped a behind-the-back pass to Adam Henrique.
In a nanosecond, Henrique smacked the flawless pass into the back of the net.
Bedlam ensued.
It would be the last of Getzlaf’s 737 assists and 1,019 points in his 1,157th and final NHL game, all franchise records. The final score of the Ducks’ 6-3 loss Sunday to the St. Louis Blues at Honda Center was quickly relegated to the trash bin of history. A standing-room-only crowd of 17,446 roared and chanted and cheered Getzlaf in his farewell game.
“Incredible,” he said of his final night in uniform. “It was incredible. It was a lot more than I expected and it was extremely emotional. Happy and sad and all of those other things at the same time.”
The Ducks have games Tuesday in San Jose and Friday in Dallas to play, but Getzlaf has played his final shift, providing one last thrill for the memory banks, for the highlight reels, for the Ducks faithful to smile and recall in the seasons to come. At the end, they wouldn’t leave, won’t stop applauding the captain.
“It was awesome,” Getzlaf said. “It was more than I could ever imagine. The amount of people who showed up to go through that with me was incredible. I couldn’t have asked for more. That showed me a lot. It hit me in the heart to see that many people showed up tonight.”
It certainly was nostalgic for a while, with a full house raining thunderous cheers upon Getzlaf during a rousing pregame ceremony in which the Ducks presented him with a golf vacation and a dune buggy driven onto the ice by Hall of Famer and franchise icon Teemu Selanne.
The Ducks even managed to build a 2-0 lead despite managing only three shots on goal and being badly outplayed in the first period. Max Comtois and Gerry Mayhew scored for the Ducks on their first and second shots on Blues goalie Ville Husso. St. Louis had the game’s first eight shots.
Ducks goalie John Gibson preserved the lead for as long as he could, but Jordan Kyrou, Vladimir Tarasenko, Ivan Barbashev and Justin Faulk scored second-period goals as St. Louis benefitted from a sustained attack that broke open the game. Gibson faced 37 shots by game’s end.
Pavel Buchnevich and Marco Scandella scored third-period goals for St. Louis.
It looked as if the game might end 6-2 in the Blues’ favor, but Getzlaf provided one more cause for celebration with his pass to Henrique to cut the Ducks deficit to 6-3 at 17:19 of the third. The fans had been cheering Getzlaf on each shift in the final period, chanting his name again and again.
“Absolutely not,” Getzlaf said when asked if he had any thoughts of shooting as he charged down the ice with Henrique on his left wing in the closing minutes of the game. “There wasn’t a chance in my mind that I was shooting that puck. I couldn’t ask for a better way to finish it.”
Henrique would later say his only thought as he raced down the ice was that he better not miss the target.
“I was a little nervous,” he said. “I was thinking that he was in a good spot. He should shoot. But it’s ‘Getzy’ so, you know, he makes a spin-a-rama pass right on the tape. I just tried to be ready for it and not think too much as it was coming over. Just praying it went in. It was special to be a part of that.
“Tonight was a special night for everybody involved.”
