Ducks Gain Momentum With Victory

Teams with six meager victories in 23 games should not feel this good about themselves. Then again, they probably shouldn’t be handling league powers with apparent ease, either.

But that’s the Mighty Ducks for you. One week they look like minor-leaguers, the next they’re beating the Detroit Red Wings for the first time in franchise history.

The Ducks trashed the hex and the Red Wings with a 3-1 victory in front of an announced sellout crowd of 17,174 at the Pond.

“We’ve waited a long, long time to beat these guys,” defenseman Bobby Dollas said after the Ducks ended a 12-game winless streak against Detroit with a convincing victory.

“I’ve been here four years and we’ve come close. But we came out tonight on a mission.”

The Ducks, 6-13-4, are last place in the Pacific Division, but they showed signs they won’t be a league punching bag much longer.

Sunday’s victory completed an impressive weekend sweep. They defeated the San Jose Sharks, 3-0, Saturday night in San Jose.

It’s not a call to start printing playoff tickets yet, but the Ducks think it’s at least a start.

“Beating a team like Detroit will give us a lot more confidence,” said winger Teemu Selanne, who scored the Ducks’ first goal and extended his points streak to nine consecutive games.

“There’s a great feeling in this dressing room right now.”

After a horrid start, missing Paul Kariya because of an abdominal injury for the first 11 games and threatening to fall from contention before Thanksgiving, the Ducks have at last caught one team in the Western Conference.

They moved into a last-place tie with the Phoenix Coyotes Sunday.

“As bleak as it’s been, it looks a lot brighter now,” Coach Ron Wilson said.

The Ducks extended their streak of shutout hockey to five periods by keeping the Red Wings scoreless in the first period. They have given up only three goals in three games. Their penalty-killing unit, one of the league’s worst, hasn’t given up a power-play goal in three games.

Plus, the Ducks are undefeated in their last three (2-0-1) and have their first winning streak this season.

Like Saturday, Kariya got the Ducks headed in the right direction.

With the Ducks trailing, 1-0, midway through the second period, Kariya set up Selanne’s game-tying goal. Kariya picked up a blocked shot in his zone, took a couple of strides, then fed a perfect pass to a hard-charging Selanne, who went in alone against goaltender Mike Vernon.

Selanne kept it simple, slipping a low shot between Vernon’s legs for his team-leading 13th goal. It also was his fourth goal and 13th point in the past nine games.

A moment later, Ted Drury fed Garry Valk for what turned out to be the game-winning goal at the 10:31 mark.

“Teddy made a great pass, threaded it through two [Red Wings] right to my stick, and I was ready for it,” Valk said. “It was a big goal.”

Defenseman Darren Van Impe added a clinching goal with 1:44 left. Goalie Guy Hebert and the Duck defense kept the Red Wings’ scoring chances to a minimum down the stretch. Hebert stopped 30 of 31 shots.

“It just goes to show you how much we’ve grown in four years,” Hebert said after the Ducks ended their 0-9-3 streak against Detroit.

The Red Wings drilled the Ducks, 7-2, in their inaugural game in 1993, and until Sunday hadn’t managed worse than a tie.

And it wasn’t as if the Red Wings had been slumping, as San Jose has been with a five-game winless streak. Detroit was unbeaten in the past four games and were coming off a 6-1 victory over San Jose Thursday and a 6-0 rout of the Kings Saturday.

“We made a couple of mistakes,” Detroit Coach Scotty Bowman said. “Usually we don’t. But if you make mistakes you pay.”

At game’s end, the Ducks streamed over the boards to congratulate Hebert, but they made a point of not overdoing it. They are painfully aware of their lowly stature.

“We can’t sit back and say, ‘Hey, we beat Detroit,’ and then rest for the rest of the week,” Dollas said.