Ducks’ Getzlaf doesn’t worry about anyone’s ‘underdog’ status

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This article was published 15/04/2015 (3799 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Anaheim Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf fielded the volleys of reporters today with the confidence you’d expect from the Western Conference’s top team.

The Ducks meet the Winnipeg Jets in the Stanley Cup playoffs’ first round, starting here Thursday night.

“Once you’ve learned it in the past, there is no underdog,” Getzlaf said after today’s morning practice at Honda Center. “Everybody’s just here playing. We all made the playoffs. There is no best team in this conference. We’re taking them the same way we would anybody.”

Asked again about the Jets’ claiming underdog status, Getzlaf came right back with this: “There’s value in whatever you want to put on it. They’re trying to label themselves as that, it’s their mindset and to get people on their side, I don’t play media games. We’re here to play hockey. We know they’re a great team and we’re going to try to do our best to get off on the right foot tomorrow.”

The Ducks are the conference’s No. 1 seed based on their 109-point regular season, 10 more than the Jets.

“I’d say it was very important,” Getzlaf said, beaming on that subject. “The stats will show you every different thing there is out there. We’re comfortable with where we are. We wanted to finish as high as we could.

“Given this situation, if we have a Game 7 we’d like to have it in our building. We’re comfortable with that. That’s the true advantage.”

Anaheim won all three games this season against the Jets, two of them in extra time, and all three games were played by mid-January.

The Ducks, who have won three straight Pacific Division titles since they missed the playoffs in 2012, have plenty of recent playoff experience.

The Jets have not been in the playoffs since their 2011 relocation.

Ducks coach Bruce Boudreau wasn’t putting much stock in that difference today.

“If you haven’t played an NHL playoff game, all you’ve done is heard about how much the tempo is ramped up and the physicalness, everything,” he said. “For those guys, all they’ve got to go on is their nerves.

“But once they get their first hit and get involved in the game, I think that goes pretty quickly.”

There’s also lots of chatter around this series that Boudreau and the Ducks are somewhat under the gun because they haven’t been successful enough with their recently powerful teams.

“What pressure?” he said today. “There’s pressure on every team to win. And everybody puts the pressure on themselves. We want to win as badly as Winnipeg wants to win and as badly as any of the other 14 teams want to win.

“You put that pressure on yourself.”

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca