Oiler Goaltender Ranford Makes a Big Turnaround : Hockey: After playing poorly and being pulled from game, he gets his act together on trip.

A few nights back, Edmonton Oiler goaltender Bill Ranford must have looked ahead and seen The Pond as the end of a very hard road. It sat out there, waiting.

Less than a week later, he had a whole new outlook.

Ranford turned away 32 of 33 shots in the Oilers’ 3-1 victory over the Mighty Ducks Sunday, giving Edmonton three consecutive road victories for the first time since 1989-90--the year the Oilers won their last Stanley Cup.

For Ranford, however, it was a more personal victory.

For starers, Ranford has never played well in Anaheim. He lost two overtime games last season in which he gave up tying goals late in the third period.

To make matters worse, Ranford was yanked in consecutive games before the three-game streak.

But Ranford has turned that all around.

“Bill knew coming in he has never done well in this building,” Coach Ron Low said. “But you look what he’s done the last four days and you can see he’s been a big reason for a great road trip.”

On Thursday, Ranford stopped 24 shots in a 5-3 victory over Pacific Division-leading Colorado. On Saturday, he made 14 saves in a 4-2 victory over San Jose. He had never been yanked from a game.

The three-games-in-four-nights swing ended in Anaheim and Ranford looked as he did in 1990, when he was the most valuable player in the playoffs.

The Ducks had opportunities, plenty of them. But, with the exception of Mike Sillinger’s second-period breakaway goal, Ranford denied everything.

“Tonight I guessed right on the ones I couldn’t see,” Ranford said. “I was making the first save and then the defense would step in and clear.” Two things that weren’t happening before the trip.

Ranford and the defense were giving up goals and given them up quickly. The Oilers lost at home to St. Louis, 7-3, then opened the trip with a 6-2 loss in Vancouver.

Ranford was yanked from both games. Edmonton, at that point, had lost five consecutive games, giving up 30 goals.

“I was dreadful,” he said. “You can’t expect to stay in when you’re playing that poorly.”

Said Low: ‘In all those games, we were down, 3-0, 10 minutes in. I don’t know how to explain it. Bill wasn’t stopping the first shots and the ones he did, the rebound always seemed to be laying right there. It added up to [bad] goaltending.”

In four days, all that changed.

“He made four or five great saves in Colorado,” Low said. “He made a save point-blank in the third period last night.

“Tonight, we looked tired. Bill held us up.”

Even with a man advantage, the Ducks were unable to beat Ranford. Jiri Slegr was called for hooking 1 minute 22 seconds into the game. The Ducks looked sharp on the power play, getting off four clear shots. Ranford stopped all four.

This couldn’t have come as a surprise to the Ducks. Ranford, after all, made 31 saves in a 2-0 shutout in Edmonton on Nov. 22.

Sunday it was just more of the same.

“We were around the net a lot,” Duck right wing Todd Krygier said. “We had some rebounds, but he made the saves.”

Which, for Ranford, was a nice change.

“I’ve had trouble here the past couple years,” he said. “So this was something to build on.”