No Excuse for Ducks’ Foul Play

Take heart, Mighty Duck fans. Better days and nights are ahead for your faltering hockey team.

After all, it can’t get any worse than in the first two periods of Friday’s 6-2 loss to the Phoenix Coyotes before 16,560 disgruntled fans, can it?

The Ducks play the San Jose Sharks at the Pond on Sunday, so stay tuned. Maybe it can.

Neither Paul Kariya nor Teemu Selanne could save the Ducks from themselves Friday. Kariya scored his fourth goal in three games and Selanne earned an assist.

But there were far too many breakdowns for two players to have made a dramatic difference. Past belly-flops might have accurately been chalked up to Kariya’s absence because of his contract dispute with Duck management.

But with Kariya back in the lineup for his third game after signing a two-year, $14-million contract last week, there were no such excuses available.

The Ducks’ goaltending was shaky, their penalty-killing was abysmal, their power play was ineffective, their defense didn’t defend and their offense couldn’t score until they faced a 6-0 deficit in the third period.

The Coyotes scored on their first four power-play opportunities and the Ducks went 0 for 7. Kariya at last broke the drought with his power-play goal 44 seconds into the final period.

And those weren’t exactly the Stanley Cup champions the Ducks were facing either. You might recall the Ducks defeated the Coyotes in the first round of the playoffs last season.

But that seemed like a lifetime ago Friday.

The Coyotes played like a team bent on ending an eight-game winless streak. The Ducks played like a team inching toward a similar one.

Most puzzling was the Ducks’ poor start against perhaps their biggest rival. To be sure, the calendar reads December, not April or May. But Ducks looked as if they were playing in a September exhibition game for most of the first two periods.

The result was the Ducks’ second consecutive loss by a 6-2 score, their sixth defeat in the last eight games and 12th in the past 18. In the past five games, they are 1-4 and have been outscored, 24-12.

What’s more, the Ducks are a woeful 4-10-3 at the Pond. Anaheim fans aren’t considered among the most knowledgeable in the game, but they certainly know bad hockey when they see it.

The Ducks were booed off the ice at the end of the first and second periods. Those fans who stuck around until the bitter end were rewarded with a credible third period from the Ducks, however.

Goals by Kariya and Joe Sacco trimmed Phoenix’s lead to 6-2 only 2:29 into the third. Hebert grew sharper as the game progressed and made several fine saves, including a stop on Mike Gartner on a breakaway.

No question, they won the game’s final 20 minutes. But there was the obvious matter of the first 40.

The Ducks trailed, 3-0, after three power-play goals in the first period. They were down, 6-0, after the second period.

When the Ducks returned to start the second period, Guy Hebert replaced ineffective starter Mikhail Shtalenkov in goal.

It didn’t help.

Shtalenkov, starting for only the third time in the past 10 games, struggled right from the start. He failed to stop Michel Petit’s less-than-blistering slap shot from the blue line at 2:32.

He couldn’t have done much to stop the Coyotes’ second goal. Keith Tkachuk planted himself in the slot and punched in a rebound at 10:21.

John Slaney then scored at 12:18 on another changeup from the blue line that Shtalenkov failed to handle.

Exit Shtalenkov. Enter Hebert.