No Lead Is Safe for Ducks

MONTREAL —  A half a dozen goals, and it wasn’t enough?

The Mighty Ducks have been fretting about how they’ll score without Paul Kariya in the lineup, but their problem against the Montreal Canadiens on Monday night was keeping the puck out of the net.

The Ducks twice blew two-goal leads and ended up with a 6-6 tie as a Molson Centre crowd of 20,306 watched the Canadiens start the season 0-0-2.

“We shouldn’t let them score six goals,” said Teemu Selanne, who had a goal and two assists. “There are not so many nights when we can score six goals when [Kariya] is not here.”

The Ducks have given up 10 goals in two games, and you have to wonder if they might have been a little hasty in trading Jason York, an unspectacular but reliable defenseman, just before the season.

“Our ‘D’ struggled out there. We gave them too much room,” Duck Coach Ron Wilson said. “It just takes time. Preseason, you see certain things. But you have to wait until the real bullets start flying in the regular season. But [Montreal] has a great group of forwards, three solid lines. They’re very deep.

“For us, we’re without a key person. We could have rolled over and died. Our players hung in there. We came back two times, but so did they.”

The Ducks led, 2-0, midway through the first period after power-play goals by Fredrik Olausson and Jari Kurri. They were ahead, 5-3, going into the third.

But they were undone by two Montreal scoring flurries and a chapeau trick by Brian Savage. Known for his quick starts, Savage had two goals in the first and another in the third. Saku Koivu, a second-year player from Finland, assisted on all three.

Montreal trailed by two goals late in the first but scored three times in a span of 1:54, twice on power plays after penalties against defensemen David Karpa and Ruslan Salei, who was playing his first NHL game. The other goal came after Stephane Richer stole the puck from journeyman defenseman Adrian Plavsic.

“Maybe offensively we surprised ourselves, but we surprised ourselves defensively too,” Plavsic said. “I thought I could have done a better job. It’s the second game. Some individuals played better than others.

“I think Montreal had a lot of speed, but at times we were disorganized and gave away some clear chances. We gave up a lot of shots. We didn’t give our goalie a lot of help.”

Guy Hebert faced 42 shots. The Ducks put only 24 on net against Montreal goalies Jocelyn Thibault and Pat Jablonski, who replaced Thibault after Valeri Karpov gave the Ducks a 5-3 lead at 15:34 of the second.

“I thought we were going to win, 5-3, 6-3,” Hebert said. “That team has so much offense, they get in close and it’s like a feeding frenzy. But any time you have a 5-3 lead going into the third you should be able to hold that lead and win a game.”

Savage’s third goal made the score 5-4 at 4:32 of the third, and Pierre Turgeon tied the score 53 seconds later when Karpa stayed back while Turgeon did a whirligig and then beat a screened Hebert with a rising shot from 30 feet.

Mark Recchi scored the go-ahead goal for Montreal on a power play at 8:17 of the third after Martin Rucinsky skated around Karpa to make the pass across the slot to Recchi, who put the puck in the net before Hebert got across.

Defenseman Bobby Dollas bailed out the Ducks with 5:51 left in regulation when he scored off a nice pass from Roman Oksiuta. Oksiuta also set up Kevin Todd in the second when he intercepted a clearing pass and whipped it to Todd in front of the net.

The Ducks outshot Montreal, 5-0, in the five-minute overtime period, but had to settle for a single point.

“It was a hard game,” Hebert said. “I tried to battle. Maybe one of the saves got us the one point, but I’m not satisfied with the tie. Maybe another save or two and we win the game.

“Anything’s better than a loss. We’ve got 80 more games but who knows, maybe this will be the one point that gets us where we want to go.”