Ducks Stay Alive, but Their Destiny Is in Other Hands

Now the Mighty Ducks have to decide whether they can bear to watch.

Or bear not to.

Their playoff hopes are still alive after a 5-3 victory over Dallas in a must-win game Friday night in front of 17,174 at the Pond.

But they need for either Toronto to lose or Vancouver to lose or tie tonight to make their final game of the season Sunday against Winnipeg a one-game, do-or-die battle for their first trip to the Stanley Cup playoffs.

“Some guys don’t want to watch,” goalie Guy Hebert said. “They want to take their medicine quick, find out who won or lost. I’m a hockey fan. I’ll be sitting in front of the tube.”

With one game left, the Ducks have 76 points and are one point behind eighth-place Vancouver and two points behind Toronto and Winnipeg, though the Jets already have clinched because they own the tiebreaker against the Ducks since they have more victories.

If Vancouver loses to Calgary tonight, the Ducks would need only a tie against Winnipeg on Sunday. (They’d win a tie with Vancouver in the standings because they would have more victories.)

If Toronto loses to Edmonton, the Ducks would need to win to get in, tying Toronto in points but winning the tiebreaker, once again because they would have more victories.

“It’ll be hockey night in Anaheim, watching Hockey Night in Canada,” Duck Coach Ron Wilson said. “The team I rooted for when I was a kid was the Maple Leafs. Now I have to root against them. And obviously I’ll be rooting against the Vancouver Canucks [where he used to be an assistant coach]. The two teams I had ties to, I have to root against them now.”

The Ducks’ Paul Kariya has been playing as if he’d give his eye teeth to make the playoffs, and against Dallas he gave lots of blood--and three capped teeth.

“They’re false teeth, anyway,” Wilson said.

The game turned in the second period after Kariya and the Stars’ Joe Nieuwendyk got their sticks crossed in the neutral zone. Nieuwendyk’s stick popped up violently, sending Kariya crumpling to the ice, and Nieuwendyk drew a high-sticking major and an automatic game misconduct.

The high-sticking penalty gave the Ducks a five-minute power play on which they scored two goals within 27 seconds of each other to take a 3-1 lead.

Referee Terry Gregson could have given Nieuwendyk a double-minor if he thought the injury was inadvertent, but he assessed the major.

“It was just accidental,” Nieuwendyk said. “I was trying to hook him to get toward the puck. It’s always a discretionary call by the ref.”

The score was 1-1 when the long power play started--and Kariya was on the ice from the beginning, though still trying to stem the bleeding in his mouth. Though he’s a slight 5-9 at most, he’s paid the price as much as anyone lately, suffering a badly bruised right foot earlier this week when he dived to block a shot--not usually a task undertaken by superstars.

With the long man advantage, Steve Rucchin camped out in front of the goal and scored off a pass from Joe Sacco at 4:40 of the second period for a 2-1 lead.

Unlike minor penalties, major penalties don’t expire after a power play goal is scored, and seconds later, Teemu Selanne was in the same spot and scored off an assist by Fredrik Olausson for a 3-1 lead only 1:45 into the power play. Selanne scored a second goal in the third period, his 40th of the season.

The Ducks led by as much as 4-1, and held off the small rally Dallas put up, letting them no closer than 4-2.

As for tonight’s crucial Toronto and Vancouver games, defenseman Bobby Dollas is one player who has been saying he’d rather somebody just wake him up and tell him the score when it’s over. It remains to be seen whether he can resist watching.

Wilson said he won’t gather the team to watch together, leaving it up to players to decide. It will take a satellite to find the games, and players are likely to gather in places where the game can be picked up--one of which will be the Ducks’ video center at the Pond.

“I’ll probably be in there in the dungeon with Tim Army with a big bowl of popcorn,” Hebert said. “I think some guys will want to get together to keep an eye on the thing.”

Duck Notes

If the Ducks were to make the playoffs by finishing eighth, they would face Detroit beginning with Games 1 and 2 Wednesday and Friday in Detroit, moving to the Pond for Games 3 and 4 on April 21 and April 24. . . . If they were to finish seventh, they’d play Colorado in Denver Tuesday and Thursday before returning to the Pond next Saturday and April 23.