Mighty Ducks Perform the Unspeakable

These hockey scores just in from the Arrowhead Pit of Anaheim:

Mighty Ducks 7, 1994 Stanley Cup Champions 4.

Mighty Ducks 6, 1995 Stanley Cup Champions 1.

These quotes just in from the dressing room of a third-year NHL expansion team that was 2-8 last Sunday morning:

“We’re playing the best hockey in the league right now.”

“I can see us making the playoffs this year.”

“If we play the way we did tonight on this next road trip, we’ll take all three. I mean, we were almost perfect tonight.”

Are we seeing right?

Are we hearing right?

The New York Rangers and the New Jersey Devils, slashed across their championship ring fingers and chased out of Anaheim by a cumulative landslide of 13 goals to five?

Mike Sillinger, Todd Ewen and Ron Wilson predicting unbeaten road swings through eastern Canada and invitations to the Western Conference quarterfinals come next April?

All right, everyone, take deep breaths. Maybe lie down on the couch a while. And somebody keep an eye on Jacques Lemaire on the Devils’ flight back home. The way the coach was talking Sunday night, he shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the exit row.

“It’s awful what has happened,” Lemaire lamented after watching six Ducks put pucks past both of his goalies.

“Terrible.

“I didn’t expect a game like this at all.”

Lemaire didn’t expect three second-period goals by Paul Kariya, Shaun Van Allen and Garry Valk?

Apparently not. Immediately after Van Allen’s, Lemaire changed goalies, replacing Martin Brodeur with Chris Terreri, because something had to be seriously wrong with Brodeur--an allergic reaction to bad arena rock, perhaps--for something like this to occur.

And Lemaire wasn’t prepared for three third-period goals by Oleg Tverdovsky, Sillinger and Chad Kilger, all of them struck within a five-minute span?

With Tverdovsky blasting the puck between Terreri’s knocked knees from just inside the blue line?

With Sillinger cracking home a pad rebound on the fly and then whipping a no-look pass across the crease onto the waiting and eager stick of the rookie Kilger?

This isn’t Mighty Duck hockey as the states and the provinces have come to know it?

Sillinger blinked and almost thought he was playing for the Detroit Red Wings again. “We’ve got Fedorov and Yzerman in this room, don’t we?” he said, grinning.

It was easy to become disoriented. Sunday’s game began with New Jersey’s Steve Thomas shooting the puck through the net, followed by teammate Ken Daneyko bulging the back of the net, only to have Daneyko’s goal disallowed because he scored it while Thomas’ goal was still under review--except no ice official had bothered to blow his whistle for the requisite stoppage of play.

So the Ducks went 1-0 down to 2-0 down to 1-0 down again before Kariya equalized with an uncontested jaunt across all three lines and a wrist-snapping flick of the puck between Brodeur’s legs. This was followed by Van Allen glancing one in off the right pad of Brodeur and Valk stealing the puck from Tommy Albelin in his own end and outskating Albelin down the ice for a breakaway greeting to reserve goalie Terreri.

Lost amid the blur of white and green was a dazzling run by Kilger, who shredded the Devil defense as if it were a slalom run--zig, zag, zig and puck off the near post--and brought this awed reaction from veteran grinder Ewen:

“I dropped to my knees and started bowing--’I’m not worthy!’ ”

Goals by Kariya, Tverdovsky and Kilger in the same against the defending Stanley Cup champion.

This is how the blueprint is supposed to work, but the scheduled time of delivery was originally somewhere around 1998.

“It’s fun to see the young guys score,” Wilson said. “Kilger, Oleg and Kariya--our first three first-round draft picks. Everybody’s happy in La-La Land.”

Sunday’s stunner completed an unprecedented home stand for the Ducks. They went 4-0 against Calgary, St. Louis, the Rangers and the Devils, matching the longest winning streak the franchise has had. But the Ducks outscored their four visitors, 23-7, in the process.

“And those last three are pretty damn good teams,” Wilson noted. “The three of them combined for 15 scoring chances and we had 45. It’s great. We’re young and naive enough to think, ‘We’re off and running.’ ”

All the way to, believe it or not, the Stanley Cup playoffs.

“I’ve said this team can make the playoffs,” Wilson claimed. “If we use our speed the way we did tonight and take advantage of our [scoring] opportunities, sure, we can make it.”

That’s a long way to come from 2-8, where the Ducks were situated barely one week ago.

“If we didn’t have [he playoffs] in mind before,” Ewen said, “we have it now. The way this team is progressing now, it’s very realistic.”

Only 58 games to go. But with 60 games to go, who could have ever fathomed back-to-back routs of the last two Stanley Cup champions?

“We’re playing the best hockey in the league right now,” Sillinger said, straight face refusing to crack. “People seeing these scores on the East Coast are probably going, ‘Wow.’ ”

Expletives depleted, of course.