Ducks Show Penguins How Other Half Lives : Hockey: Anaheim ends nine-game winless streak, 6-3, and stops Pittsburgh’s eight-game winning streak.

The Mighty Ducks hadn’t won since Nov. 21, and Pittsburgh hadn’t lost since Nov. 22.

So about the only thing the Ducks had going for them Wednesday night at The Pond of Anaheim was the sense that things couldn’t go on like that forever--for either team.

The Ducks--still missing five regulars--somehow found a way to halt their nine-game winless streak with a 6-3 victory over Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr and the rest of the NHL’s most dominant offensive team.

The loss ended Pittsburgh’s eight-game winning streak, the second-longest in club history.

“It’s great. I had one of those feelings we just might do it,” Duck Coach Ron Wilson said. “I don’t know, I thought maybe they’d take us a little lightly, especially with all our injuries. Our players rose to the occasion.”

The Ducks were led by the first four-point game of Paul Kariya’s career. Kariya scored his 20th and 21st goals and assisted on two others. Todd Krygier had a goal and two assists, and David Sacco, a recent call-up from the minors and the younger brother of Duck winger Joe Sacco, added a goal and an assist.

The Ducks couldn’t complain this time about referee Don Koharski’s whistle, enjoying three five-on-three power plays in the first two periods and scoring on one.

But the key was slowing a Pittsburgh offense that averages more than five goals a game and has the league’s best power play, and they did it with a rarely used page in Wilson’s playbook. Wilson matched lines against the Penguins all night, keeping center Bob Corkum on Lemieux as much as possible--playing him perhaps 35 minutes or more.

It was too much for the Ducks to hope to shut Lemieux out, though. He assisted Ron Francis on a power-play goal 2:28 into the third that cut the Ducks’ lead to 4-2, and scored on the power play at 15:22, giving him 68 points in 24 games.

The remaining suspense was whether the Ducks would hold their third-period lead--something they’ve had trouble with--but this time they managed, aided by Joe Sacco’s breakaway goal at 6:36 of the period. Garry Valk scored an empty-net goal with 57 seconds left in the game.

“That was a huge goal by Joe Sacco,” Wilson said. “It was almost like we were following the script, up 4-1, a stupid penalty in the offensive zone, a lucky goal by them. At 4-2, we could have gone tentative.”

Though Lemieux scored, Jagr did not. The league’s second-leading scorer with 59 points, Jagr had been on a 12-game point streak, the longest of his career. It was only the third time this season he has failed to get a point, and goalie Mikhail Shtalenkov stopped him on a breakaway in the final two minutes when the puck got away from Jagr at the last moment.

“That was like a game-saver,” said Wilson, who called Shtalenkov a “brick wall” in the third.

Shtalenkov made 36 saves for the Ducks as he started for the sixth time in the last eight games. Wilson has offered little other explanation other than that he believes Shtalenkov deserves to play and handles the puck better than Guy Hebert.

Duck Notes

Center Viacheslav Butsayev was re-assigned to minor-league affiliate Baltimore of the International league after appearing in seven games with the Ducks, scoring one goal. . . . Buy a team, fete your pals: Disney Chairman Michael Eisner has used the Ducks to promote other Disney ventures all along. On Wednesday, he used several players for an elaborate Jumbotron birthday greeting for Michael Ovitz, the agent-turned-Disney president who watched from Eisner’s suite. . . . Pittsburgh center Richard Park, a rookie from Rancho Palos Verdes, has played in 26 of the Penguins’ 28 games and and has three goals and one assist. . . . Duck right wing Valeri Karpov, recovering from a broken wrist, will resume practicing with the team Saturday and said he hopes to be back in the lineup “right after Christmas.”