Oh what a feeling in LA on Saturday! And not because people were buying Toyotas after seeing them at the Auto Show, either. The two men in question here are Phoenix Coyotes GM Don Maloney and his new starting netminder, Ilya Bryzgalov. Both were happy and optimistic following Bryzgalov’s first game with the team, a 1-0 shutout of the LA Kings.

For Maloney, the chance to have a youngster with nothing but upside in the net didn’t quite come as a surprise. He filled in the background details and discussed his thoughts on his new acquisition in an exclusive interview with Inside Hockey after Saturday’s game.

“From the time I got this job in early June, I’ve been looking at who could do the [goaltending] job best for us long-term. I’ve had probably fifteen or twenty conversations with Brian Burke over the last three or four months. When Ilya Bryzgalov became available yesterday, he was certainly a guy we were very familiar with.”

“We [he and Burke] had many conversations. The last one I had with Brian was about a week ago, and I told him, ‘Listen, we’re not in a position to give up young assets,’ and to Brian’s credit, he did the right thing by the player. He had given his word to the player [to find him a place to be a starter] and fortunately, we were the recipients.”

Readers will remember that Bryzgalov appeared on waivers Friday, with the NHL system working like this: the bottom team in the standings has a shot at the player first, and it goes from there in ranking order. So when the waiver “wire” comes out (it is actually now an email, according to former Birmingham Bulls GM and now Rangers pro scout Gilles Leger), teams put in their bids, and the league sorts out who gets the player.

The teams are then responsible to deal with roster and cap problems. Only twenty-three men are allowed on the active roster at any one time. For Phoenix this was no issue. “We had a roster position,” Maloney commented.

The other factor: salary cap. Was this any problem for the desert dogs? “No, [laughing] it was never . . . . We’re right at the bottom of our cap. Still this [taking on the new contract] is a reflection of our ownership. Obviously, this was a contact we were going to have to add.”

And so, as Saturday dawned, the team found itself with just one of the three goalies pictured in their media guide (David Aebisher, Alex Auld, and Mikael Tellqvist) on their game-day roster. And that one--Tellqvist--was in backup duty to the newcomer.

Bryzgalov, for his part, seemed quite overwhelmed by the turn of events that had overtaken him in the past day. As soon as the throng of reporters got to him in the locker room, he almost bowed his head, speaking in a soft voice. “This is the first time this happens to me. I have [a] different feeling.”

Then he took a big breath. “I appreciate the Anaheim Ducks, Brian Burke, all that they’ve done for me. I want to say thank you to Phoenix, Dan Maloney and Wayne Gretzky for giving me this opportunity.”

His reception by his new squad was immediate, he reported. “I just walked to the locker room; guys were so excited to see me. I feel like I’ve always been here.” The room he’s talking about—the visitor’s dressing room at Staples. “I came straight here from my house [in Orange County].”

“My phone rang all day yesterday,” he said after his win. “My friends kept asking me, ‘Where are you going?’ after Brian Burke told me I was put on waivers. I tried to just not think about it. I had no idea. I told them, ‘I don’t know anything. I don’t find out until [the] next morning at 9am.’”

When he got the word, it wasn’t an “Oh, join the team this weekend” call. It was, “Take the freeway up here—you’re playing today”

“I was a little bit late to the game [a 1pm start], because I just found out this morning that Phoenix picked me up. I was here at like, 11:30.” When he got on the ice, he felt the effects of the last twenty-four hours. “I didn’t skate yesterday, so my legs felt heavy.”

His one regret, though he didn’t use that word to describe it, was that everything happened so fast that he didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to too many people. “I did talk to Giggy [JS Giguere], and we wished each other good luck, but it happened fast. I just have great memories of that team, a great organization. Beautiful people work for the Anaheim Ducks.”

And now that Bryzgalov is with the Arizona team, what are the plans, longer-term?

First, Maloney: “I think we have to get to know each other. He has to get to know us, and we have to get to know him. At some point, we’ll talk contract, but that’s well down the road.”

Is it likely he’ll play most of the rest of the season? “If he’s like this, he’ll probably start in all sixty-two [games],” Maloney joked. Then he added, “That’s Wayne’s call, but we brought him in to be our number one guy, and he’s going to start the majority of them”

And Bryzgalov: At this point, he hasn’t thought ahead. “I don’t know about the future. I am just happy to win the game today.”

Nor has he yet sorted out the personal issues that go with joining a new team. When asked whether he’ll move his family to Phoenix, he said, “I don’t know. I have to find out what’s going on. [He laughs] I can’t buy a house every year I play.” His family lives in Yorba Linda.

***

Reading the above, you might say to yourself, “Yeah, that’s all very interesting, but players come and go. That’s hockey.”
But the case of Ilya Bryzgalov is perhaps stranger than some, both because of his record and the reason why he was moved (alluded to above by both the goaltender and his new GM). Drafted by the Anaheim Ducks in 2000 as the 44th overall pick (round two), “Bryz,” as he’s universally called, played a total of forty-nine regular-season games with Anaheim, going 26-23 with a 2.48GAA and a .909 save percentage.

But despite playing just two complete seasons (he had single games in both 2001-02 and 2003-04), the playoffs have been Bryzgalov’s time to shine. Last year, in winning the Stanley Cup, Bryzgalov came in when JS Giguere missed time due to his newborn son’s medical woes, and won. He went 3-1 with a 2.25GAA and .922 save percentage.

The year before, he led the NHL in goals against in the playoffs, with a 1.46GAA, in save percentage (.944) and shutouts, posting the second-longest shutout streak in league playoff history.

Add to his numbers his physical abilities. He’s tall, at 6”3’, and lean (think Sean Burke or Ron Hextall), the type of guy who’ll look the same at thirty-seven as he does at twenty-seven. He does a post-to-post splits, has an even temperament, and could play at the NHL level for another decade or more. Plus, he’s been through a grinding Stanley Cup chase twice, once to the Conference Finals, and once to the overall win (2007).

Why would anyone let a guy like that go? For Brian Burke, the answer was—to honor a commitment. Burke has been widely quoted since last spring as saying that he appreciates what Bryzgalov has given the Ducks, and that he sees him as starting-netminder material, no question. But with Anaheim signing JS Giguere to a long-term extension last summer, Bryzgalov’s hopes to become a starter were not to pan out with the team. So Burke told him he’d find him a place to play.

For weeks, he worked to find a deal for Bryzgalov. Surely the guy was worth a player, some cash, a draft pick? No dice. He’s also UFA after this season, and nobody around the league was willing to sacrifice something for him.

Does that make sense? Think about the insanity that overtakes GMs at the trade deadline. Like, half your team for Peter Forsberg, good young prospects for Brent Sopel and Mark Parrish, and we could go on and on. What will a playoff-winning goalie be worth late next winter? And who’s going to regret not grabbing this guy now? The list is long.

Now think abou this: Phoenix, in the midst of a youth movement, took him after Washington, the team with the worst current record and thus the first crack, passed.

Get out your pencil and have a little fun with that. Had the Coyotes won on Thursday night, both Edmonton and Buffalo would have had a chance at the goaltender before Phoenix. On the other hand, would Burke have put him up for grabs knowing that Conference rival and playoff adversary Edmonton would have a shot? Was he sure in any event that Phoenix would exercise the option?

So what has Phoenix gotten for, well, for nothing? A starting goalie in the prime of his career, at least age-wise. A guy with a Stanley Cup ring. Hope.

And Bryzgalov, at least on Saturday, proved his mettle with his shutout. (He had two in his regular-season career prior.) The Kings made it somewhat easy, actually. The forced the netminder to make a couple of good stops early, including one in classic stand-up style that for all the world looked like Ken Dryden in 1972. But most of the game, they didn’t press.

LA had eleven shots in period one, just seven in period two, and none through the first ten minutes of the third. They did manage ten in P3, none dangerous, to end with twenty-eight. Phoenix, on the other hand, had thirty-eight. Thus when you note that the first two stars of the game were Bryzgalov and Jason LaBarbera, you can understand why. Some might even argue that the order should have been reversed, with LaBarbera getting first star for playing both defense and goalie after his team quit in front of him.

But never mind. What matters is that for now, the desert has a new hero, the team has the chance to develop their offense knowing that a quality guy will be on the backline to soak up their mistakes, and Bryzgalov has the chance to prove himself to be what he and others believe he his, a guy with number one potential.

***

And yet more Inside stuff:

The events gave Inside Hockey the opportunity to ask a bunch of questions that you, Insider, are likely to have had yourself but never had the chance to ask.

1. When a goalie moves to a new team, what happens to his equipment?

He takes it with him, but shortly after, he gets another set, color-keyed to the new team. Saturday, Bryzgalov had his orange-accented (Anaheim) pads on. A Kings equipment manager told me, though, that the team would order him a new set.

How do they know the size? “The company has all that,” he replied.

Who pays? “The team does. It’s not free.”

So do the Coyotes owe the Ducks for a set of pads, since the player brought the old set, the one they must have bought, with him? “No, it’s just part of things.”

2. What about the masks? Bryz wore a white mask against the Kings, leading one pro scout in the press area to comment, “He’s got to have had that painted over.”

But after the game, as I approached the goaltender, he was just zipping the mask, an ITech, into its protective bag. It looked new. “It is,” he said. “It’s a spare one, that I’ve used in practice before with my old team.”

When I asked whether he’d get one painted, he indicated that he might have this one lettered, saying that he doesn’t use a custom-molded mask, but one that company supplies as standard equipment. “I just use the regular size [mask], and I will have it painted the team colors.”

3. What about the new sweater?

“The new team, specifically our department, does that,” the equipment guy said. “They get word to us, and we sew the numbers and the name on.”

4. How about other accessories?

Just a note on this: one couldn’t help but noticing that the game undershirt, one of the sweat-proof ones, that Bryzgalov wore Saturday had the logo of the Ducks in tiny letters on the chest.

Notes

Don Maloney, you might recall, played for the Rangers, Whalers, and Islanders. As a player, he won the MVP award at the 1984 all-star game. Again on the theme that I wanted to ask the questions you probably wish you could, I queried him on the car that’s given with that award.

“You know what happened? It was a Camaro, fire-engine red. I got a speeding ticket about three weeks after I had it, and I ended up trading that in and another Honda I had at the time, and I got a Jaguar.”

Big thanks to Phoenix team officials for getting me the players and GM to interview after their win against LA. All people involved went out of their way to accommodate my requests despite the pressure of having to hustle to catch their plane home.

Brian Kennedy’s new book Growing Up Hockey is the story you wish you’d written about yourself. Check it out at www.growinguphockey.com.