Joe Chesterfield. That was the name of the goaltender Joffrey Lupul used to wear out in his driveway in Edmonton when he was growing up with illusions of someday playing in the NHL in the late 1980s.
That goalie made from cushions rescued from an old couch had no chance. Lupul knocked the stuffing out of him a long time ago, when Joffrey couldn't decide who he was going to be that day ... Mark Messier or Glenn Anderson.
Not Wayne Gretzky like most of the other kids. "The Great One" passed the puck too much. Young Joffrey was born to shoot.
Pucks under the crossbar. Top shelf. Picking corners. It was a knack.
Jose Theodore must have looked like Joe Chesterfield in Game 3 of the Western Conference semifinals, when Lupul became the first player in NHL history to score four goals in a playoff game that included the game-winner in overtime, giving the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim a 4-3 victory over the Colorado Avalanche May 9.
Larry Wigge has covered the NHL since 1969. The longtime NHL columnist for The Sporting News, Wigge is now an NHL.com columnist and a frequent contributor to the website.
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Lupul won it with his slap shot that appeared to deflect in front of Theodore and fool the goaltender ... as it oozed between his pads and into the net 16 minutes into sudden death.
Though he was the first pick, seventh overall, in the 2002 draft, Lupul finally found the mark this season, scoring 28 goals and adding 25 assists. But this was clearly one of those dreamy nights ... like the ones he used to have in his driveway.
Or like the day he scored three goals to lead the Western Conference YoungStars to victory at the All-Star Game in St. Paul in 2004, when he told me, "I used to practice my shooting wearing my Oilers jersey. In fact, I think I've had an Oilers jersey in my closet since I was about 4. But ... "
He smiled and quickly added, "There's a Ducks jersey there ... now."
Lupul is 6-foot-1, 194 pounds now. He was just a small tike ... with a big dream back then. He was so small that, at 5-8 when he was 15, he was passed over in Edmonton's local bantam draft. But a growth spurt -- what a growth spurt -- helped him reach his dreams.
"Oh ... it was about seven inches in 13 months ... " Lupul said, looking a little embarrassed to tell the story. "I really sprouted up there. My mom's tall, my dad's tall. So we felt it was just a matter of time. Finally, one year, I started to grow."
He had scored a Western Hockey League high of 56 goals in 72 games for Medicine Hat in 2001-02 and was ranked fourth overall in the 2002 draft behind Rick Nash, Kari Lehtonen and Jay Bouwmeester before he slipped to the seventh pick, owned by Anaheim. One year later, he scored 41 goals in just 50 games.
And now, he's clearly grown into the goal-scorer the Mighty Ducks thought he'd be in 2002.
"The last time I was out in that driveway shooting pucks, I had to be a little careful," he laughed. "My shot is a little too hard right now ... and I didn't want to break any windows."
"You couldn't beat the timing, could you?" Ducks captain Scott Niedermayer said. "It seemed like everything he shot went in tonight."
He couldn't have picked a better night, either -- after Lupul took a couple bad penalties in the first two games of the series against Colorado.
"'Lups' is still a young player. He has his peaks and valleys," Mighty Ducks coach Randy Carlyle said. "One thing we all know: He's a pure shooter."
Lupul had just 13 goals in 75 games as a rookie for the Mighty Ducks in 2003-04, playing just 13 minutes or so a night. But he really grew up during the lockout, when the Ducks sent him to Cincinnati of the American Hockey League and he scored 30 goals in 65 games.
"I got more minutes ... and more confidence," Lupul said. "You start to feel like all of your God-given talents are starting to take over."
Mighty Ducks coach Randy Carlyle comments on
Joffery Lupul:
"When he shoots the puck, the goalie has to make a save. He doesn't miss the net too often."
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"You can't teach some of the things that he does," New York Rangers center Steve Rucchin, a former teammate, said. "He's got all of those natural moves a goal scorer has, trying to find the opening to get into position to get an open shot ... a goal-scoring opportunity. I just think Lupes is going to become a star in this league with all of those skills he has."
Former Ducks GM Bryan Murray, who was in charge in Anaheim in 2002 when the team drafted Lupul, remembered bringing Joffrey in from Medicine Hat to be with the team during the 2003 playoffs just to see what the big time is like ... plus what great skills he would be facing when he got his turn.
"It was a real advantage to be there then. It showed me what it takes to play at that level ... how focused you have to be, how high the energy level was, how the guys who were successful played a grittier game," Lupul recalled. "It made me hungry to be there."
But there's more to it than just coasting along on talent alone. With a lot of young players, there's a danger that a little success breeds overconfidence -- and some youngsters start to lose the race to the pucks or get beat to loose pucks in their feet. It's a learning curve that nearly every young player has to learn.
"I remember telling him that shooters don't need to be sitting on the bench in the NHL, they need to be playing ... somewhere," Murray said earlier this season while coaching the Ottawa Senators. "That was a message I had to keep reminding Joffrey of that."
Murray said he saw Lupul playing at Cincinnati in a couple games he went to during the lockout, and ...
"You could see that he was rounding into the form we thought he'd show us in Anaheim when we drafted him," Murray said with a big smile on his face. "He's just got that knack, that ability that all goal scorers have."
Funny, but this isn't exactly what Craig Lupul, an Edmonton lawyer and Joffrey's proud father had when he (pardon the spelling) named his son after English author Geoffrey Chaucer.
Joffrey is writing his stories with his hands, a stick and a puck ... usually deposited somewhere that not even Joe Chesterfield could stop.
"When he shoots the puck, the goalie has to make a save," Carlyle said. "He doesn't miss the net too often."
"I think scoring goals is something you're born with," Lupul observed. "It looks easy, but it's an ability to shoot with the knowledge and work a player puts into being in the scoring positions that make life easier for you.
"It's something I'm still working on ... trying to let the game come to me."
It's a natural gift. Lupul doesn't just hit the net, he hits the corners ... and the 5-hole of unsuspecting goaltenders like Jose Theodore.
There was a dreamy look on Joffrey Lupul's face after a particularly good game in St. Louis earlier this season, when we were talking about his long and winding trail to the NHL.
"It seems like just yesterday I was getting cut from the my bantam team," Lupul said, "because the coach thought I was too small ... too this, too that."
Joe Chesterfield knew all about Joffrey Lupul before the rest of us did. But he isn't giving away any of Joffrey's secrets.
