Youth Serves Ducks Well in Overtime : Hockey: After Oilers’ third-period rally ties it, younger Anaheim lineup comes through to win, 4-3, on Lebeau’s goal.

The Mighty Ducks are getting younger, with three fresh faces in the lineup against Edmonton on Wednesday night. But it was the sort of game that could make anybody age fast.

The Ducks were 23.6 seconds from victory in regulation when Edmonton’s Shayne Corson threw the puck at the net and it went in off the stick of Duck defenseman Bobby Dollas. But they won it in overtime, 4-3, when Stephan Lebeau cut in near the bottom of the left circle and beat Edmonton goalie Bill Ranford on a wrist shot with 50 seconds left in overtime.

“It was a real character-builder for us,” Duck Coach Ron Wilson said.

It was the Ducks’ third victory in four games, and the Oilers’ seventh loss in a row.

The Ducks are a team that is getting younger and, if all goes according to plan, more skilled at the same time.

Denny Lambert, one of the new players, scored a goal, but so did the Ducks’ oldest player, Randy Ladouceur.

Forward Mike Sillinger and defenseman Jason York played their first games for the Ducks after being acquired in the trade that sent popular enforcer Stu Grimson to Detroit on Tuesday.

“It’s going to take York and Sillinger a little while to settle in,” Wilson said. “The win takes the heat off.”

It was Lambert, a left wing who was called up from San Diego to add toughness and depth, who scored the Ducks’ first goal, the first of his NHL career after playing 277 games for the minor league San Diego Gulls.

Defenseman Milos Holan tried a point shot, Shaun Van Allen shot the rebound off goalie Bill Ranford’s skate and Lambert jumped on the puck and put it in the net at 9:01 of the first for a 1-0 lead.

Lambert has tried to shake a reputation for being merely a fighter, and he stayed in Anaheim last summer to work on his conditioning and agility. The work paid off. He had his typical 222 penalty minutes with the Gulls this season but also had 25 goals and 60 points.

“I thought obviously Denny Lambert had a career game,” Wilson said. “He scored his first NHL goal and he banged bodies.”

Ladouceur, 34, scored his second goal in a Duck uniform when he converted a rebound at 9:33 of the second. It was his first goal since Nov. 19, 1993 against Vancouver, a stretch of 89 games.

Goalie Mikhail Shtalenkov shut out Edmonton until 10:59 of the third, when Mike Stapleton scored on a deflection of a point shot.

The Ducks led, 3-1, after a goal by Bob Corkum, but David Oliver cut the lead to 3-2 at 14:44.

After a recent spate of trading veterans for younger players, the average age of the Ducks is 26--young but not completely green--and there are only two players older than 30, Ladouceur and Tom Kurvers.

Sillinger and York add skill, and Sillinger, in particular, is supposed to add scoring punch. He played on the top line with Lebeau and Paul Kariya.

“He worked his butt off (in Detroit), but because of their depth chart, he wasn’t going to get a lot of ice time,” Wilson said. “Now he’s going to get a chance.”

Wilson hopes the new start for a few players energizes the whole team.

“They’ve been wanting to play in the NHL and now they have the opportunity,” he said.

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Notes

Former President Gerald Ford and his wife, Betty, watched the game from the box of Walt Disney Co. Chairman Michael Eisner. . . . Edmonton left wing Shayne Corson was in the lineup, but he is expected to be traded before the NHL deadline Friday after being stripped of the team captaincy following a dispute with Coach George Burnett. . . . Edmonton defenseman Ryan McGill was cut above and below the eye and was taken to the hospital for further examination. . . . Duck forwards Todd Ewen, who has a cut on his left hand, and Todd Krygier, who has a sore groin, were scratched, as were defensemen Oleg Tverdovsky and Tom Kurvers, who are healthy.