It’s All or Nothing for Hebert and the Ducks

ST. LOUIS —  Now that the Mighty Ducks finally seem to have their goaltending in order, the question is where do they go from here?

Will they feed off Guy Hebert’s superb play in net, rallying to shoulder their way among the Western Conference’s elite teams? Or will they continue to play just well enough to lose?

The Ducks showed flashes of the former before lapsing into the latter en route to a 1-0 loss Tuesday to the St. Louis Blues before 18,410 at the Savvis Center.

“We’re playing better and better every night, but we haven’t gotten the results yet,” Hebert said.

Even by Duck standards this one was a head-scratcher.

Hebert made every save he could possibly make--31 by game’s end--in his second strong start after missing four games because of a sore left shoulder. He gave up the only goal of the game while flat on his back, bodies piled on him with 5:32 left in the second period.

How St. Louis rookie Daniel Corso got the puck in the Duck net for his first NHL goal wasn’t as remarkable as how the Blues got on the power play that set up the goal.

Duck tough guy Jim Cummins, seeing St. Louis goalie Roman Turek fall on his rear end while playing the puck around the boards, raced to the front of the net with 7:12 left in the middle period.

Turek got to his skates and arrived at a point on the ice near the left goal post at the same time as did Cummins.

“I didn’t even see him,” Cummins explained. “He ran into me. He kind of bumped into me and did a triple somersault. He really played it up.”

Mick McGeough whistled Cummins for interference with the goaltender, putting the Blues on the power play at the 12:48 mark of the second period.

Soon enough, Corso skated into Hebert’s crease, put one shot into the goalie’s pads, then took another whack at the puck as defenseman Oleg Tverdovsky slammed him into Hebert. Somehow the puck trickled past the tangle of bodies and into the net at the 14:28 mark.

“The refs want to protect the goalies,” Hebert said when asked about Cummins’ collision with Turek. “I hated to see it. I hope to get the same call if it happens to me.”

Hebert didn’t get a call on Corso’s goal because Tverdovsky propelled the Blues’ center into the goalie. Hebert couldn’t stop the puck because Corso and Tverdovsky had him pinned to the ice.

As the game progressed, it became clear it would take extraordinary circumstances for either team to score. Hebert was every bit as sound as in Sunday’s 4-0 victory over the Kings.

The Ducks failed to generate enough sustained pressure to put a puck behind Turek. By game’s end, the Ducks were outshot, 32-19, and failed to click on four chances with the man advantage, ending their streak of games with power-play goals at seven.

“The power play didn’t give us anything tonight,” said captain Paul Kariya, whose cross-ice pass set up Marty McInnis for a deflection that Turek managed to kick away while the Ducks had a man advantage in the second period.

“When you’re playing a good defensive team, the power play has to come through. Against a team like that you’ve got to be exceptional. Guy was exceptional.”

The rest of the Ducks were merely above average, which helps to explain why they dropped to 3-5-1-1 in their last 10 games and are 9-13-4-3 overall for 25 points in 29 games.