Kariya, Ducks Put Sharks in Deep End

Without Paul Kariya in the lineup the Mighty Ducks are a disaster, plain and simple. With him they’re not half bad as they showed the San Jose Sharks on Saturday.

Kariya scored two of the Ducks’ three power-play goals--which tied a team record--in a 3-0 victory over the Sharks in front of 17,442 at San Jose Arena.

Kariya, who missed the season’s first 11 games with a abdominal injury and two more last week with a concussion, scored the goals in the first and second periods.

“We always knew we’d get Paul back,” Coach Ron Wilson said. “We’re better than a .500 team with him in the lineup. Bottom line is you’ve got to get him the puck in those [power-play] situations, and tonight we did that.”

With Kariya fit and making plays the Ducks are 4-3-2. But they are 1-10-2 and far from competitive without him.

This victory wasn’t all Kariya’s doing. Linemate Teemu Selanne assisted on the Ducks’ first and third goals to extend his points streak to eight consecutive games (three goals, nine assists). And goaltender Guy Hebert got his 10th career shutout.

“We’ve had tough road up to this point,” said Hebert, who stopped 25 shots. “We’ve been showing signs of playing better game-by-game. We haven’t won the special teams battles until now, so it was a great all-around game.”

It was their best road game since shutting out Chicago, 2-0, Oct. 9. Although it was only the Ducks’ fifth victory this season, they showed they were the better team.

“We won all the battles tonight,” said Warren Rychel, who scored the Ducks’ third power-play goal.

The Sharks are winless in their last six games (0-5-1), and their lead in the Pacific Division standings over the last-place Ducks is down to four points.

Like many teams recently, the Sharks seemed bent on shadowing Kariya in hopes of throwing him off his game.

It worked for only a few seconds, then wound up costing the Sharks the game. San Jose’s Tony Granato goaded Kariya into taking a roughing penalty 14 seconds into the game.

Then, instead of trying to match slashes, shoves and punches, the Ducks stuck to their finesse game and let the Sharks take dumb penalties. That’s not to say the Ducks backed away from repeated confrontations. They simply picked their spots better than the Sharks.

“I think we had to show we weren’t going to get pushed around,” said Kariya, who has six goals and four assists in nine games. “The way to beat a tough team is to capitalize on the power play.”

Kariya converted at the 4:57 mark of the first period, taking a cross-ice pass from Selanne to score the game’s first goal. Shark defenseman Marcus Ragnarsson deflected the shot and goalie Chris Terreri couldn’t handle the puck’s change of pace.

In the second period, Kariya scored on a shot from the high slot for a 2-0 Duck lead at the 3:09 mark.

About seven minutes later, Selanne fed Rychel, standing alone at the left post, for the Ducks’ third goal. It was Rychel’s seventh goal this season, the most he’s scored since he had 10 in 80 games for the Kings in 1993-94.

“We put Warren Rychel out there on the power play just to be an agitator standing in front of the net and he gets rewarded with a goal,” Wilson said.