Hebert Fails to Stop Blues

It was a day Guy Hebert will remember as “bittersweet.”

Sunday morning, Hebert became the No. 1 goalie when his buddy Ron Tugnutt was traded to Montreal.

“I’ve lost a partner,” Hebert told Tugnutt, giving him a playful hug as they walked through a dank hall in St. Louis Arena.

Sunday night, Hebert started for the Mighty Ducks in a 4-1 loss to the St. Louis Blues, the team he was a backup on for two seasons.

Another old buddy, Blue goalie Curtis Joseph, showed the form that rendered Hebert a backup when he was here. He made 42 saves and held the Ducks to a goal by Terry Yake at 14:39 of the second period, with the Blues leading, 2-0.

Yake’s goal, his 19th, came when he left a drop pass for Bob Corkum, cut to the slot and scored off Corkum’s pass.

The comeback was stopped cold when the Blues’ Vitali Prokhorov scored on the next shift (14:58).

Kevin Miller got the Blues off to a good start when he scored his 20th goal of the season at 4:03 of the first after Hebert tried to poke check the puck away with Miller closing in on a breakaway chance. The puck came back onto Miller’s stick as he skated wide, though, and he put it in the net.

“Guy half-fanned on a clearing attempt and the guy scores from a near-impossible angle,” Coach Ron Wilson said.

Craig Janney added a goal at 7:02 of the second.

“There they pick up a puck off a dump-in and we blew our coverage there,” Wilson said. “There again, Guy makes a good play and he pokes the puck off the guy’s skate into the net. We weren’t getting a lot of breaks.”

Brendan Shanahan’s 36th goal closed out the Blues’ scoring.

“That’s usually the story for the Blues,” Wilson said. “It’s Curtis Joseph and they’ve got a couple of guys up front who usually finish off the plays, whether it’s Brett Hull, Craig Janney, Brendan Shanahan. One of those guys will kill you, and Kevin Miller can, too. And then they rely on Cujo to make all the big stops and tonight he was up to it.”

Hebert’s day was filled with ambivalent feelings about the trade.

“I figured we made it through the season this far, I didn’t think either one of us thought anything was going to really change the rest of the year,” he said. “We’ve become pretty good friends over the last several months and it’s tough to see him go because I think we both helped each other out a lot. (Still) this is something I’ve worked for for a long time, and it’s a big vote of confidence by the organization and I really feel it could have gone either way. I mean, we were pretty close in everything, all the stats and all that. I’m happy being here and happy to get the chance to play a lot of games now.”

Duck Notes

The Ducks are expected to acquire goaltender John Tanner today from Quebec for a 1995 fourth-round draft pick. Tanner, 23, was with Cornwall of the American Hockey League, and will be assigned to San Diego, replacing Mikhail Shtalenkov, who replaced Ron Tugnutt on the Duck roster. . . . Defenseman Alexei Kasatonov was unable to wear a shoe on his swollen right foot after being hit with a shot and will undergo X-rays today. . . . Center Anatoli Semenov was scratched because of lingering soreness in his formerly dislocated left elbow.