Kariya Keeps Ducks in the Playoff Hunt

It’s the time of year when every point counts. Every save. Every goal.

The slightest detail can mean the season, and the Mighty Ducks won by the narrowest of margins Wednesday when Paul Kariya scored the game’s only goal to beat an equally focused Edmonton team, 1-0, in front of 17,174 at the Pond of Anaheim.

By midway through the second period, the out-of-town scoreboard showed this final score: Winnipeg 3, Dallas 1. That meant the Oilers and Ducks were trying to win merely to keep pace with the Jets, who hold the eighth and final Western Conference playoff spot by four points over the Ducks and by five over the Oilers.

“It’s a great feeling after a game like that,” Duck Coach Ron Wilson said. “But you sweat bullets for 60 minutes.”

“It was two teams fighting for a spot tonight,” said Edmonton’s Luke Richardson.

Duck goalie Guy Hebert made 27 saves in earning his third shutout of the season and the seventh of his career. Edmonton’s Joaquin Gage was more spectacular, making 24 saves against an array of terrific scoring chances by the Ducks, but Kariya beat him with a wrist shot on a first-period power play.

“It doesn’t matter how pretty or how ugly. The important thing is the two points,” Hebert said. “In a 1-0 game, rarely is the goalie standing on his head. We just kept the pressure on in the neutral zone and in their end. The defensemen played great tonight. I was just kind of the guy standing there.”

Though the Jets are the team closest in the Ducks’ sights, Wilson has turned his attention elsewhere, to teams such as Vancouver that aren’t playing well and are running out of games. The Canucks are six points ahead of the Ducks but have only three games left. The Ducks have six remaining.

“Vancouver’s coming back and we’ve got three games in hand,” Wilson said.

There are plenty of permutations that would allow the Ducks to get in, and as many that wouldn’t.

“I think first of all we have to win,” Hebert said. “We may get some help, we may not. Ron said this morning that we may win all seven and still not make it. But there are other scenarios out there. Vancouver’s not playing that great. Who knows?”

To win by a 1-0 margin is a rarity. The Ducks had done it only once before, beating Toronto, 1-0, on Dec. 15, 1993, during their first season. Hebert was also in goal for that game.

After a shaky season, he has been rock steady during the Ducks’ most important stretch, and has started every game of their current 8-2-1 run. He has given up more than two goals only once in that stretch, in a 5-1 loss to Detroit in which he was relieved early on. In the last nine games, he has a 1.43 goals-against average and a remarkable .956 save percentage.

“Guy was outstanding,” Wilson said. “He wasn’t tested nearly as much as Joaquin Gage. He certainly ate his Wheaties and kept them in the game. I’m sure they were looking at the scoreboard as much as we were, seeing that Winnipeg had won.”

Gage gave up the only goal the Ducks needed 9:21 into the game. With the Ducks on a power play, Anatoli Semenov picked the puck out of a crowd and spotted Kariya open just inside the blue line. Kariya’s wrist shot beat Gage, giving the Ducks a 1-0 lead and Kariya his 44th goal and 95th point of the season.

Gage was pulled for an extra attacker with 1:10 left in the game, but Edmonton couldn’t get the tying goal.

“It’s just a mad dash. They’re trying to dump it in, we’re trying to dump it out,” said Duck defenseman Bobby Dollas, who was on the ice at the end. “It’s a big scramble, with them turning around to throw it at the net, and us trying to hold them off.”

They did, by the narrowest of margins. And if they hadn’t?

“It would have been devastating,” Dollas said.

Duck Notes

The Ducks were scheduled to wear their “third jerseys,” but since the jerseys for new players Anatoli Semenov and Ken Baumgartner hadn’t arrived, they switched to their purple road jerseys. Edmonton wore white as planned.