Scoring Isn’t Ewen’s Primary Goal : Hockey: Duck enforcer gets his fifth goal of the season. But that’s not where his strengths lie.

He’s big, strong, mean and a pretty fair skater, but is Todd Ewen now a goal-scorer, too?

Wait, he’ll answer as soon as he stops laughing.

“I’m not going to keep an eye on the scoring race, that’s for sure,” Ewen said after scoring his fifth goal of the season in the Mighty Ducks’ 5-2 victory over Winnipeg on Wednesday.

“I’m pleased to produce. But my role isn’t scoring. If I start doing that, they might as well send me down (to the minor leagues).”

Still, Wednesday was a banner night by Ewen’s standards.

Just check out the scoring summary on the back pages. That’s Ewen scoring his fifth goal of the season--tying his total for 1992-93--on assists from Steven King and Bob Corkum at the 3:23 mark of the second period. But wait, there’s more: Eight minutes worth of roughing penalties.

He would have had a fight, too, but substitute linesmen Sam Gowan and Don Moffatt were working their final game and wanted no part of a Ewen-Tie Domi rumble, so they held on for dear life when the two squared off late in the game.

No, Ewen hasn’t forsaken his role as Duck tough guy to become a finesse player, scoring goal after goal. For one thing, his hands would never allow it.

You’ve heard of boxers having hands of stone? Well, that’s Ewen. No touch around the net.

“I think all five goals I’ve had have gone off two pads, off a helmet and in,” said Ewen, who had five goals and 193 penalty minutes for Montreal last season. “It’s never a bad play to shoot the puck, especially with hands like mine. I don’t think I’ve hit the back of the net yet. That’s what I’m shooting for next.”

Wednesday, Ewen went to the front of the net to pounce on a rebound, took a whack at the puck, then watched it trickle past Winnipeg goalie Stephane Beauregard.

Beauregard reached back in an attempt to stop the slow-moving puck before it crossed the goal line, but it was too late.

It wasn’t pretty. Nothing Ewen does looks particularly smooth.

He came to the Ducks, along with Patrik Carnback, in a trade from Montreal with a reputation as a first-rate enforcer. But he has given them so much more.

So what if he hasn’t scored more than 10 goals in a season since 1985-86, when he was playing junior hockey in the Western Hockey League. By then his method of operation was firmly in place. He scored 11 goals, but racked up 304 penalty minutes.

Ewen fit in perfectly with the Ducks’ bigger-is-better philosophy. Here was a guy who could work over the opposition, throwing them so far off their game the Ducks might eke out a victory.

The Ducks won for the ninth time Wednesday and Ewen knows the secret.

“We can’t get into a shootout with these guys,” Ewen said of the Ducks’ game-plan against a Winnipeg team that had scored eight goals against the Kings Tuesday.

And what else?

“It’s hard work--that’s the bottom line,” he said. “Bump and grind.