It Gets Ugly Yet Again for Hebert, Ducks : Hockey: Embattled goalie gives up three goals in each of first two periods in 6-1 loss to Red Wings.

Whenever and however it began, Mighty Duck goaltender Guy Hebert is in the throes of a crisis.

One night after an ugly three-goal first period against San Jose earned Hebert a seat on the bench for the rest of the game, Duck Coach Ron Wilson sent him out to start again Wednesday against Detroit.

And incredibly, Hebert gave up three goals in the first again, then three more in the second as the Ducks lost to the red-hot Red Wings, 6-1, before 17,174 at The Pond of Anaheim.

Detroit won for the 17th time in its last 19 games, getting two goals each from Steve Yzerman and Vyacheslav Kozlov with Sergei Fedorov out because of a sore wrist.

It wasn’t until 9:02 of the third period that the Ducks ended Mike Vernon’s shutout bid with a power-play goal by Peter Douris. That lessened the humiliation only a bit, because the Ducks have troubles. Wilson called a team meeting after the game, closing the locker-room doors.

Hebert is foundering, and Wilson is determined to get him back on track, starting him the night after a disastrous performance and sticking with him through another disastrous first period and the rest of the game. He finally righted himself in the third, when he faced 15 shots and didn’t allow a goal.

That was a glimmer of the hope, anyway.

“I’ve got to find a way to get him going and get his confidence back,” Wilson said at the morning skate. “I’ve got to get him in goal and help him through it.”

This, after going with Mikhail Shtalenkov for eight of the previous 10 games because of Hebert’s sore ankle and Wilson’s flagging confidence in his former No. 1 goalie.

The Red Wings’ first-period goals were all into nearly wide-open nets. The second came on a hotly disputed play with Hebert dazed and on his back deep in his net after Detroit’s Greg Johnson barreled into him. But referee Don Koharski never blew his whistle to stop play and Keith Primeau knocked the puck in over Hebert’s outstretched body.

“The attacking player is going to the net and being checked by a Mighty Duck,” Koharski told a pool reporter after the game. “It was the momentum of the Anaheim player that brought him into the net. As for why he was down, the back of his mask was caught in the mesh of the net. There was no injury.”

The third goal was pure ugliness, with Hebert following Vyacheslav Kozlov as he skated past the left post and then losing his footing and sprawling to the ice while Kozlov scored on a wraparound into an open net. Whether his chronically bad right ankle had anything to do with it is open to question.

It’s hard to say when Hebert lost his game, and how much of it has to do with his ankle. There’s also a question whether his confidence crisis was deepened by his own play or by Wilson’s recent benching of him.

“He’s had nagging injuries that developed into bad habits, and then it became a confidence problem,” Wilson said.

The confidence problem apparently has spread to other Duck players, who have lost their comfort level with Hebert in goal.

“They don’t have confidence in him,” Wilson said. “With your goaltender, there’s a wave effect through the whole team. When they [think] the goalie is infallible, they do things up ice aggressively and take chances and they’re successful because of their confidence in the goalie behind them. But a bad goal has an effect for the next four, five minutes. It’s, ‘Oh, no, here we go again.’ ”