Loss gives plenty cause for concern

Wait ‘til last year.

In their first playoff game as the defending Stanley Cup champions, facing a team that was imploding during the final month of the season, the Ducks tripped over their own lofty expectations and dissolved into an ugly pile of mush before a stunned crowd that didn’t fill the Honda Center in body or spirit.

All the mistakes the Ducks overcame last spring because their character and scoring power ran so deep were insurmountable for them Thursday night.

All the missteps they made during their Cup run but so often reversed on the strength of their resilience and sheer grit cost them at every turn in a series-opening 4-0 loss to the Dallas Stars.

They knew they are a different team than they were a year ago, that they’d have to rely even more heavily on their defense following the departure of high-scoring winger Dustin Penner via free agency and the salary cap-related trade of valued second-line center Andy McDonald.

Different didn’t mean better.

It didn’t mean even remotely competitive after the first few minutes.

“We were executing and moving the puck well,” defenseman Chris Pronger said, “and then we just stopped.”

They stopped because they started taking dumb penalties, the kind that make coaches pull out their remaining hair and turn game films into horror shows.

The kind that can sabotage the chances of even the most resolute team.

Not that the Ducks looked resolute.

After struggling for scoring consistency most of the season, the fourth-seeded Ducks knew they’d have to scratch and claw for every goal against the rugged Stars.

They didn’t know they’d also have to scramble to find poise and intelligence.

Two needless penalties the Ducks took in the offensive zone turned into Dallas’ first two goals, a lead that proved more than enough for the fifth-seeded Stars -- especially after the Ducks managed to avoid taking a shot for a span of 19 minutes and 30 seconds in the first and second periods.

The Stars scored twice more with the man advantage, toying with a helpless Jean-Sebastien Giguere and leaving the Ducks sorting through a mix of disappointment, frustration and regret.

In the grim quiet of the Ducks’ locker room, Pronger forced something resembling a smile when he was asked what had happened.

“Good question,” he said.

“The first 10 minutes we got off the way we wanted to, and then we started taking penalties and the penalty killing obvious didn’t do the job.”

Their skid began when Travis Moen elbowed Matt Niskanen in the offensive zone at 10:22 of the first period.

Steve Ott deflected a shot by Stephane Robidas past a surprised Giguere for Dallas’ first goal 63 seconds later.

Apparently unimpressed by that, Duck center Brian Sutherby cross-checked Stars defenseman Trevor Daley in the offensive zone at 16:01.

Loui Eriksson snapped a 35-foot shot past Giguere 1 minute and 33 seconds later.

“There are times you need to take a penalty,” Pronger said. “To stop a breakaway or a scoring chance, those are penalties we’re willing to take.”

The penalties taken by Moen and Sutherby -- and later by Ryan Getzlaf and Francois Beauchemin to set up the third and fourth goals -- weren’t necessary or acceptable by any definition.

Even for the Ducks, the league’s most penalized team this season, these were atrocious.

“We have to be a lot more disciplined and do a lot better job on the penalty killing,” right wing Rob Niedermayer said. “There’s no way you can go out and give up four power-play goals.

“We were ready to go. We just took some bad penalties, and that takes away from our game.”

When a stoppage halted the clock with 6:25 to play in the third period, unhappy fans began a mass exodus through the aisles and out into the warm April night.

Did the Ducks’ chances of repeating follow them out the door?

It’s dangerous to read too much into one loss in a best-of-seven series, hideous though that loss may have been. No player or coach was panicked, though all were clearly concerned that they had felt so prepared and were so easily unraveled.

“It’s Game 1,” Getzlaf said, “and we’re going to take what we can out of this and move forward.”

Not that there was much to take -- except the knowledge that they can’t afford to play like this again.

They should be concerned about the bad penalties, the lost battles in the corners -- territory they claimed as their own last spring -- and their inability to make the extra effort that playoff hockey demands.

“We’re disappointed in the way we played,” Pronger said, “but the beauty of it is we get to play them again on Saturday. We get to go right back and right the wrongs.”

There were enough of them Thursday to suspect the Stanley Cup banner suspended above center ice will not have another placed beside it this season, at least.

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Helene Elliott can be reached at helene.elliott@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Elliott, go to latimes.com/elliott.