Ducks Score Points but Don’t Get Any : Hockey: It won’t show up in the standings, but team is respectable in 4-1 loss to Canadiens.

The NHL’s most tradition-rich team, Les Habitants , met the league’s least traditional team, Les Mighty Ducks , in the hallowed Montreal Forum on Saturday.

The Ducks’ own home is an arena whose only championship team wore roller skates, but they played the Montreal Canadiens beneath the Habs’ 24 Stanley Cup banners and left after a 4-1 loss feeling as if they half-belonged.

The Stanley Cup champions led by only two goals before Stephan Lebeau’s empty-netter with 38 seconds left, his second goal of the game, provided the final margin.

The Ducks also outshot the Canadiens, 33-27, and had two of Montreal’s goals go in after assists from defenders’ sticks and skates.

That, however, is hockey, and Les Canards as they are only occasionally called here, are savvy enough to know that close is the curse of an expansion team. There are no points awarded in the standings for good efforts or respectable losses.

“Obviously, we’re happy with the way we played defensively,” said defenseman Sean Hill, who played for the Canadiens last season and received a Stanley Cup ring during the visit, as did right wing Todd Ewen and General Manager Jack Ferreira, a former Montreal scout. “We were happy with the chances we got, but we need to put them away. The bottom line is it comes down to burying the puck, and we didn’t do it.”

Only eight games into the season, the Ducks have come face to face with what could prove to be a seasonlong struggle. They are not finishing their scoring chances and have a total of one goal over the past two games.

“There’s no question we’re not going to get as many easy or pretty goals as a lot of teams,” right wing Terry Yake said. “We have to work pretty darn hard to score, and when we get the puck around the net, somebody has to be there to finish. But the worst thing we can do right now is have everybody put pressure on themselves.

“It gets frustrating. We put too much pressure on ourselves and feel we’ve got to produce when we don’t score. In the last two games, we’ve scored one goal, and when you’re not scoring, it adds pressure. Then, when you put pressure on yourself, you start to not do what comes naturally.”

The Ducks trailed, 3-0, before left wing Garry Valk put in a third-period goal, which itself appeared to go off Montreal goaltender Patrick Roy’s skate.

There were handfuls of better chances the Ducks couldn’t capitalize on, like left wing Tim Sweeney’s second-period breakaway that hit harmlessly off goaltender Roy’s pads. Plenty of other shots went wide, had too little on them or were blocked out front by Montreal defensemen. And those that had to be stopped, with the exception of one, were stopped by Roy, the playoff MVP last year.

“We’ve managed to make a lot of goalies look good this year,” Duck Coach Ron Wilson said. “Some, obviously, are not as good as Patrick Roy. He was up to the task on a couple of opportunities. But that’s why he’s paid $100 million or whatever it is.”

* BLAZING START: The Toronto Maple Leafs set an NHL record with their ninth consecutive victory to start a season, 2-0 over the Tampa Bay Lightning. C11