Ducks Getting Beat at Their Own Game : NHL: Anaheim’s grinding, defensive-minded strategy is similar to that of Florida and other recent expansion teams.

Score one for the guys from South Florida in the first game between the NHL’s newest teams.

That’s 0-7 for the Mighty Ducks against the league’s new guard, and the frustration is mounting.

The Florida Panthers were just the latest newcomers to send the Ducks reeling.

The big postgame question was why?

Terry Yake thinks it has something to do with expansion teams’ style of play. That grinding, defensive-oriented plan seems to come back to haunt the Ducks when they have to play against it themselves.

For the record, they’re 0-4 against San Jose, 0-1 against Ottawa, O-1 against Tampa Bay and 0-1 against Florida.

“I thought we were pretty upbeat before the game,” said Yake, who had two assists in a 3-2 loss Tuesday night at Anaheim Arena. “I thought we were ready to play.”

But then the Ducks promptly fell behind, 2-0, and couldn’t make a dent in Florida’s defensive scheme.

“We want to sit back, they want to sit back,” Yake said. “It just doesn’t work (when you’re behind). You can’t do that and that makes it tough to get scoring opportunities.”

Florida kept making the simple plays, Yake said. It was nothing the Ducks haven’t seen before from San Jose, Ottawa or Tampa Bay.

“They all play the same system as us,” Yake said. “It’s a solid system the way they play it. We keep getting behind the eight-ball against all these teams. We just don’t have the horses to come back when we’re down, 3-0.”

Seated a few steps away from Yake, goalie Guy Hebert had his own take on Tuesday’s game.

“It’s just mental preparation,” he said.

He’s sick of one-goal loses, weary of slow starts and missed opportunities.

“We keep getting ourselves in trouble,” he said. “It’s getting old, losing by one goal. We have to start bearing down, winning some of these games.”

Hebert ripped the tape off his pads as he spoke, expressing concern over the Ducks’ inability to defeat their fellow newcomers.

“We have to treat every game the same,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if we’re playing the Montreal Canadiens or the Florida Panthers.”

The Panthers got a few early chances and made the most of them, Hebert said.

“We’ve gotten off to some slow starts lately, and I’m not sure why,” he said.

With so many similarities between the Ducks and the Panthers, could plain old hard work make such a big difference?

Yake is certain that’s so.

“They played an uglier game than us in the first two periods and they got the lead,” Yake said. “It always feels nice to come back, but we need to take it to them at the beginning of the game.”