Ducks Battle to Overcome a Rough Start

Forty minutes of miserable hockey left the Mighty Ducks searching for answers as they trudged to the dressing room between the second and third periods Sunday at the Pond.

Heads held low, they tried to take stock. First, they knew they had only 20 minutes to rally from a two-goal deficit to the Tampa Bay Lightning. Second, they knew Winnipeg, the team they’re chasing for the eighth playoff spot, had already won.

“We all sat in here and said, ‘We need this. We need this game,’ ” winger Garry Valk said after the Ducks rallied to tie the Lightning, 2-2, in front of 17,174.

The Ducks (23-35-6, 52 points) trail Winnipeg (28-30-4, 60 points) by eight points with 18 games left to play. The Jets scored four unanswered goals to defeat the New York Islanders, 7-5, Sunday afternoon at Uniondale, N.Y.

Certainly, there was nothing to suggest there was any sense of urgency to the Ducks’ play in first two periods. And that didn’t figure. They handled the Montreal Canadiens with ease, 5-2, Wednesday, playing one of their finest all-around games this season.

Sunday, any carry-over from that performance was impossible to find. The Ducks were horrible in most respects, including firing only nine shots at Lightning goaltender Daren Puppa and going 0 for 3 on the power play.

To be sure, the tight-checking, hard-hitting game that Tampa Bay played threw the Ducks off stride. But that didn’t make getting a handle on improving their lot in the final period any easier.

“Whatever [the reason] was, we were awful,” winger Paul Kariya said. “We had no jump, no determination.”

Coach Ron Wilson changed all that by sending Valk out with the power-play unit to start the third period. The Ducks had 39 seconds left on the man-advantage after Tampa Bay’s Jason Wiemer went off for hooking, and that turned the game around.

Valk pried the puck from a Tampa Bay player behind the Lightning net, sending it to Teemu Selanne, who whipped a pass out front to Kariya, whose slap shot found the net 34 seconds into the third.

“Our power play was just brutal for the first two periods,” said Selanne, who set a club record by extending his point streak to 10 consecutive games. He has eight goals and eight assists in 10 games since joining the Ducks in the Feb. 7 trade from Winnipeg.

Two minutes later, Joe Sacco to Shaun Van Allen to Alex Hicks back to Sacco produced the game-tying goal. After the initial pass, Sacco skated to the front of the net, accepted Hicks’ pass and beat Puppa.

“That’s something you don’t see too often from our line,” said Sacco, who has two goals and an assist in the last three games despite playing primarily on the Ducks’ third and fourth lines.

The Ducks pressed for the go-ahead goal, but couldn’t crack Puppa. They outshot Tampa Bay, 13-7, in the third period. Neither team had what could be termed a good scoring chance in the five-minute overtime period.

The Lightning built its 2-0 lead on goals by defenseman Bill Houlder, a former Duck, and Brian Bradley. Houlder’s shot from the blue line, his fifth goal this season, glanced off Kariya’s stick and crossed up Duck goalie Mikhail Shtalenkov.

Puppa, sound throughout, didn’t have much chance to work in the first two periods. The Ducks stayed on the perimeter, sending long-range shots at Puppa and avoiding contact in the corners and in front of the net.

Valk’s addition to the power play seemed the right move to jolt the Ducks from their slumber.

“I wanted somebody to stand in front of the net and shoot the puck,” Wilson said. “Some guys were just snoozing in front of the net on the power play and not going after the loose puck.”

Other than that, Wilson preferred to credit Tampa Bay rather than fault the Ducks. “They played the perfect road game,” he said of Tampa Bay.

Said Lightning Coach Terry Crisp: “They napped for two periods, then they came alive. We hoped they’d sleep for three periods, but they didn’t.”

Duck Notes

A giant get-well card from fans and the Duck organization will be delivered this week to defenseman Milos Holan, who had a marrow transplant Feb. 21 and is recovering at the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte. . . . Center Shaun Van Allen and defenseman Bobby Dollas were each limping after the game. Van Allen was hit in the foot by a puck and Dollas injured a toe. Neither injury was thought to be serious. . . . Goalie Mikhail Shtalenkov has a 2.40 goals-against average in his last 10 games.