Ducks Plow Way Through Snow, Tie Flyers

Thirty inches of snow that is slowly being plowed into mammoth drifts couldn’t keep the Mighty Ducks from getting to their game against the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday night.

Another 75 inches of Snow--in the form of 6-3 Flyer goalie Garth Snow--couldn’t shut them down either, and the Ducks overcame a two-day trip from Edmonton with a gritty 2-2 tie against the Flyers, one of the NHL’s best and most physical teams.

“It didn’t really bother us. The snow, the conditions, were how they were,” said center Steve Rucchin, who returned to the lineup after sitting out 18 games because of a sprained knee. “We were eager to get here and play the game.

“It was almost good in a way. It takes your mind off the game. If we’d been here in Philly sitting in the hotel, we might have thought about the game too much.”

“Maybe it helped us,” said Paul Kariya, who on the day he was named to his first NHL All-Star team scored his 24th goal--thereby breaking the Ducks’ season record with 39 games to play. “It made us focus a little more, be on edge.”

The game was officially a Spectrum sellout at 17,380, but to many people’s surprise, there were more than 15,000 actually on hand--many of them probably victims of cabin fever after spending three days stuck at home.

It was a physical game: Only four seconds in there was a fight between the Ducks’ Todd Ewen and the Flyers’ Shawn Antoski after Coach Ron Wilson sent Ewen out for the opening faceoff. That cost him a bench minor since Ewen wasn’t on the lineup card as a starter, and Wilson said it was “my mistake. I just got excited when I saw some of the guys they had out there to start. I would have felt bad if they’d scored [on the resulting power play.]”

Instead, it helped set a tone, especially with rugged forward Rucchin back in the lineup. The Ducks had a 2-0 lead only six minutes later, scoring when Steven King deflected a shot by defenseman David Karpa, then notching a rare power-play goal when Rucchin fed Kariya with a pretty cross-ice pass.

Eric Desjardins and John LeClair scored on Philadelphia power plays in the second to tie the score, 2-2, but goaltender Guy Hebert and a shot-blocking defense held off a Flyer attack that got more physical and furious as the threat of a tie or loss loomed.

Hebert made 31 saves--three in overtime--and defensemen David Karpa blocked a couple of shots as time ticked away. Then, with an extra Flyer attacker on the ice with 1.9 seconds left, Mike Sillinger cleanly won a faceoff from Rod Brind’Amour in the Ducks’ end, sending the puck clear out of the zone.

The Ducks were forced to spend Monday night in Pittsburgh because of airport closures and didn’t reach their Philadelphia hotel until about noon Tuesday.

The tie was “a huge point for us” Wilson said. “Obviously, when you’re playing the Flyers you’re going to have fear, especially with their physical presence. But I had a good feeling coming in.

“Maybe we shouldn’t practice tomorrow. Or maybe I should make it difficult to get to Boston. Maybe we should take a bus.”

Duck Notes

Paul Kariya become only the second all-star in Duck history--and the first to reach the game on merit--when he was named a Western Conference reserve Tuesday. Defenseman Alexei Kasatonov was chosen as the Ducks’ mandatory representative in 1994, mostly in recognition of his international career. The 1995 game was canceled by the NHL lockout. . . . The Duck record for goals in a season that Kariya broke was set by Bob Corkum with 23 in 1993-94.