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Ducks' Lapierre a peace disturber
ANAHEIM – Maxim Lapierre is the pebble inside your sock,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the gnat in your ear.
With the exception of [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] and George Parros, the Ducks became a fairly agreeable hockey team over the past year and a half.
Alarmed over this development, General Manager Bob Murray traded for Lapierre.
"I'm not going to miss that guy, that's for sure," Sidney Crosby grunted when Pittsburgh played Montreal last week.
When the Canadiens bounced Washington and Pittsburgh from the Eastern Conference playoffs last year, Lapierre raised his game and elevated Crosby's blood pressure, as he has done since both were in the Quebec Major Junior League.
"If he's saying that," Lapierre said, "it means I did my job."
Lapierre is settling into his new job as a contentious third-line center, a hole the Ducks haven't consistently filled since Samuel (He Thinks He's From Red Deer) Pahlsson.
They are 3-1 since Lapierre showed up and, since a minus-3 performance in his first game against Nashville, he has been solid in all zones, with games of seven and six hits.
"He's given us that role guy that we've needed," [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] said. "He can skate and he wins faceoffs."
"We don't see him as a high-end offensive player but we're not putting him in that role," Coach Randy Carlyle said. "He's a big body (6-foot-2) and his line (Joffrey Lupul and Brendan McMillan) is giving us safe minutes. We're hoping for some chemistry there.
"And he manages to get the attention of the opposition by being verbal."
[link widoczny dla zalogowanych] said the NHL's East/West schedule imbalance meant that he never crossed epithets with Lapierre.
The Hockey News recently ranked the NHL's top five talkers: Sean Avery, Steve Ott, Chris Pronger, Alex Burrows and Vernon Fiddler.
As usual, [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] was overlooked, but you figured Lapierre's chirpy playoff run would have won him some respect.
"It's OK, they'll know me soon," Lapierre said.
Fiddler, whom the Ducks will see tonight in Phoenix, has been known to remind his antagonists of their negative stats.
"I just go with the flow," Lapierre said. "It's whatever I'm thinking about. If we're up by two goals I'm more likely to do something like that. Sometimes I don't talk. Last game we were leading, so I didn't.
"When they reply, that's when you know they are worrying about you and losing focus."
Who has the most clever repartee?
"I don't know. I don't listen. I don't want to get caught up in that. I'm too busy playing my game."
"Busy" is the key word. Lapierre and linemates Dominic Moore and Tom Pyatt were huge for Montreal last spring, but this year Lapierre lapsed into Habsolesence, playing only three 15-minute games until he was traded on New Year's Eve. [link widoczny dla zalogowanych]
The low point was a cameo appearance of 4:23 against Washington on Dec. 28. He has exceeded 15 minutes in three of four games here.
"When Guy Carbonneau was the coach, he played me in every situation," Lapierre said. "(Jacques) Martin went the other way. So it was time for me to leave.
"What I like is the challenge of playing the best players, and that's what you get in the playoffs. So it's perfect for me right now, because we're fighting to get into the playoffs."
That quest becomes more plausible when you study the roster. [link widoczny dla zalogowanych]
The fringy players, the ones baseball people refer to as "Quadruple A," are gone. So are most of the Ducks of the future, who were rushed up last fall to provide intravenous nutrition.
The first game with St. Louis was a historically disastrous 5-1 loss. The second game was Wednesday's 7-4 victory.
As radio analyst Dan Wood pointed out, Cam Fowler and Lubomir Visnovsky were the only defensemen who played both games.
Toni Lydman and Andy Sutton got healthy, Luca Sbisa got his head straight and Andreas Lilja showed up.
Now the Ducks have legitimate NHL players whom they have to scratch. No longer are they spreading dragnets to Syracuse to find band-aids. That is why they have prospered, so far, without Ryan Getzlaf.
And, sure, it could all come apart on next week's trip to eastern Canada, plus Columbus.
"We have an awful lot of areas we need to improve," Carlyle said.
For his part Lapierre wanted to improve his reputation. He was being known as Eddie Haskell, the guy who struck the match and then sneaked off before the explosion.
So he took boxing lessons last summer in Montreal. [link widoczny dla zalogowanych]
"When you give the big hit and somebody wants to fight you, sometimes you have to face up to it," he said.
Crosby wasn't aware that Lapierre was seeking a sparring partner. He might have suggested Manny Pacquiao.