from Scott Burnside of ESPN,

The man with the perpetual scowl and the personality drawn from cactus and shards of glass seems to have been built for this game.

Ryan Kesler was not just built for a Game 7 with a trip to the Stanley Cup finals hanging in the balance, but the Anaheim Ducks believe he was built specifically to help carry them through a game like Saturday's Western Conference finals finale.

No team -- especially teams like the Ducks and Chicago Blackhawks, who have delivered six classic punch-counterpunch games -- will advance to the Stanley Cup finals because of one player.

The game is too fast, too complex; the lines separating success and failure too fine for it to be that simple.

But these games are the domain of the stars, the leaders, the players who do not shrink from challenge but grow large in the face of it.

A player like Ryan Kesler, perhaps?

"He is a force to be reckoned with when he's on his game," one team executive familiar with Kesler's evolution said.

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