Sam Donnellon: Flyers win helped bring out Giroux's creative side

NEWARK, N.J. - Don't call him flashy. Claude Giroux hates the word, for it implies an inconsistency that hockey players seek to avoid.

"Creative," he said, after leading the Flyers to their 3-0 series-clinching victory over the New Jersey Devils last night. "Sometimes it ends up looking flashy but, really, I just try to keep it simple."

Simple. Yeah, right. Thread a pass from behind your back across the crease to Arron Asham's waiting stick in Game 2. Repeat it, almost anyway, to set up the Flyers' first goal last night, the first in a three-point night.

The first hint that this would be Claude Giroux's series was on a play in Game 1, a play in which he didn't score, a play that ended with him destroying the stick that forsook him.

He took a puck and squeezed it between his skates, squeezed between two defensemen, then stopped on a dime. Both Devils defensemen sagged as if being pulled by weights, increasing the space between them and the Flyers' 22-year-old forward.

Giroux could not quite settle a bouncing puck, and his shot had little on it. But the play still dropped your jaw, still served as a business card for what was to follow.

"He would be the type of guy who would fit in with the Harlem Globetrotters," said Danny Briere, who scored on the no-look pass in the first period last night.

"I don't think he really knows what he's going to do until he does it," added Ryan Parent, standing to the side.

"Ever try to mimic him in practice?" I asked the rest of the guys in the room.

"I do," Darroll Powe said from the back of the room. "And I end up facefirst when I do."

Giroux scored the last two goals last night, the first on a slap shot that hit the upper corner of the net so hard that it rebounded out as if it hit a pipe. He scored the other amid a scrum, poking for it, poking it in, mixing it up as if he were much bigger, stronger, meaner.

He scored four goals in this series, had three assists. "For us to win, we're going to have to rely on those guys," Chris Pronger had predicted after Game 2, before Simon Gagne broke his toe and Jeff Carter broke his foot and before Ian Laperriere broke his nose last night stopping another puck with his face.

Thing is, Giroux felt that way, too. He's felt that way for months, really, asked for a bigger piece of the pie back in February, asked again after Gagne and Carter went down.

"I remember back, 2 months ago, we were talking and he told me that he wanted some more, he wanted responsibility," coach Peter Laviolette was saying after his team clinched. "And we revisited that conversation this morning with some veterans out of the lineup now. And I thought that he responded with a tremendous game."

The goals are the end. The means, the visual? That's the show. When Giroux crashes into a larger defenseman, or even two, behind the boards and emerges with the puck, it's akin to a magic trick. When he sneaks in on a shooter and picks the puck from his stick as he's about to shoot, well, that's substance, not flash.

And when he makes one of those Globetrotter passes, or moves? "You're born with some of that," Briere said. "But he works hard at it, too."

When Giroux practices his shootout moves, it draws an audience. When he takes on bigger guys and picks their pocket, there's a lot of stick-banging along the bench.

"You know what? It's an art form," Pronger said. "Guys like that - I'm sure he's been questioned in junior, questioned all the time growing up that he was too small to play. But he's learned how to squeeze through and get past guys. And he's learned how to get the puck from them, too.''

"Ever since I was a little kid playing with my buddies I've tried to make moves like that," Giroux said. "I'm just trying to make room for myself."

He's done that and more. He's done it with moves and his mind, was the player in this series for the Flyers that Ilya Kovalchuk was supposed to be for New Jersey. They've been calling Kovalchuk "flashy" all series, and all series he's been more of a fascination than a factor.

Giroux was more than that. He passed, took shots, freed up pucks at both ends, played responsibly.

He was creative. Not flashy.

"And in a big situation," said Laviolette, "he was a very, very good player for us."

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