DUCK NOTEBOOK : Corkum Finds a Remedy

Those “Results Not Reasons” T-shirts the Mighty Ducks have been wearing in the dressing room mean you’re not supposed to make any excuses. Bob Corkum apparently is one of the last players on the team who would.

He scored 23 goals last season, leading the Ducks. But eight games into this season, he didn’t have his first. Duck General Manager Jack Ferreira thought he was looking at a player who seemed “a shadow of himself.”

Turns out, he was. Corkum got so sick, dehydrated and run down a few nights ago that he lost four pounds. But he still didn’t mention a thing. When Coach Ron Wilson shortened his bench and went with three lines during the Ducks’ game Friday night against Detroit, Corkum couldn’t hide it anymore, and played only one shift in the third period.

“I was saying to myself, what the heck is wrong with Corkum?” Wilson said.

By Sunday, Corkum had downed Gatorade and Pedialyte, a rehydrating fluid, and was himself again.

“I’ve been drinking Pedialyte like it’s going out of style,” Corkum said after scoring one goal and assisting on another by Tim Sweeney during the Ducks’ 3-2 victory over the Kings. “But the goal helped a lot, that’s for sure.”

Corkum probably would have been the Ducks’ leading scorer last season, but a ruptured tendon in his foot ended his season early and Terry Yake beat his 51-point total by a point. His role this season is a little different. He’s not expected to lead the team in scoring, but to be a checking center and still knock in his share of goals.

But he admits he came back after the lockout in “moderate” shape, not because he was busy as the players’ union representative but because he was a little down on the game and found other things to do, like play his infant son, Cain, born during the layoff.

“You know, I still felt I was contributing and playing well defensively,” he said. “Even tonight, I had seven shots on net, probably five of them point-blank. I’m still not satisfied.”

*

Corkum looked more like his old self Sunday, and so did the Ducks, reverting to the style they won with last season.

“When you think of the other side of the fence, the way we were getting blown out, it’s not too hard (to return to the defensive style),” he said. “We still don’t have as much talent as a lot of other teams. A conservative style is the way this team has to play.”

*

Anatoli Semenov is out of the lineup and might not be back soon.

Semenov was the team’s best player early last season and was centering rookies Paul Kariya and Valeri Karpov on the first line at the beginning of the season. But his poor defensive play has cost him his spot on the first line and put him in the stands Sunday for the second time in the team’s nine games. Karpov also was scratched Sunday, the first time for him.

They may have to get used to it.

“You have to stick with a winning lineup,” Wilson said. “Unless there are injuries, I don’t see why we’d change.”

Karpov has a plus-minus rating of minus-8, and Semenov is a minus-7. But Karpov will be given more time to adjust than Semenov, 32.

“I want to play, like anyone,” said Semenov, who also was benched during the second period of the Ducks’ loss to Detroit Friday.