O’Neill Is Thrown Into the Breach

So was that Mike O’Neill’s fantasy or his nightmare-come-true?

Called up from the Long Beach Ice Dogs on short notice because of Mighty Duck goalie Guy Hebert’s mild concussion, O’Neill didn’t figure to get into the Ducks’ game against Pittsburgh on Wednesday.

He ended up watching Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr bear down on him during the Penguins’ 7-3 victory in front of 17,174 at the Pond.

The good news for O’Neill was he was back in the big leagues.

The bad news was it was against Lemieux and Jagr. And if that weren’t enough to cause an anxiety attack, he ended up frantically trying to extricate his goalie stick after it snagged in the webbing of the net for a few moments of the third--luckily while the action was at the other end.

The game marked another solid performance for Pittsburgh, a remarkable turnaround team that has climbed back to .500 at 13-13-3 with a 7-0-2 streak after winning only six of its first 20 games.

Lemieux had two goals and an assist Wednesday, marking his first two-goal game of the season. Almost as unusual was that Jagr didn’t have a goal, ending his goal-scoring streak at nine games, the longest in the NHL this season. Jagr has 29 goals in 29 games, which makes the math easy enough. At the moment, he is on an 82-goal pace.

“It’s tough coming in against a team with so many superstars,” O’Neill said. “I felt I was prepared. They’re just very dangerous around the net. They make plays you don’t see. You see them, but you don’t think they’re possible.”

That’s not the kind of talent O’Neill sees in the International Hockey League, obviously. O’Neill, 29, has played in the NHL before--just not since Winnipeg, his previous team, was in the NHL, and not since 1993-94, the season the Ducks entered the league.

Instead of just sitting rinkside as the emergency backup to backup Mikhail Shtalenkov, O’Neill ended up in the game when Coach Ron Wilson pulled Shtalenkov 8:44 into the second period after Pittsburgh scored its fourth goal.

The Ducks have developed a bad habit of blowing leads lately, and their 2-1 lead after the first went out the window too.

Lemieux scored the game’s first goal, his 14th of the season. But Paul Kariya and Jari Kurri put the Ducks ahead after one period.

Only 27 seconds into the second period, former Duck Alex Hicks tied the score, 2-2, with his fourth goal of the season--and his second in less than a week against the Ducks, who traded him to Pittsburgh last month.

Hicks added a little extra zest to his celebration, and on the Duck bench, Ron Wilson saw another lead become history.

Kevin Hatcher made the score 3-2 at the 6:16 mark and Petr Nedved made it 4-2 with the Penguins’ third goal of the period, and Wilson made the switch.

Hicks, so recently a Duck, also helped set up Nedved’s goal, if only by accident, when he was cut in the face by Duck defenseman Bobby Dollas’ ill-advised high-sticking. Dollas was given a double-minor but easily could have received a major and a game misconduct. It didn’t matter--Pittsburgh scored on the power play.

Wilson hoped O’Neill might change the momentum, but Pittsburgh kept rolling, getting a goal from Joe Dziedzic, another from Lemieux (his 15th) and another from Nedved (his 16th).

O’Neill’s save count was seven in a little more than 31 minutes.

The Ducks got only one more goal--from Brian Bellows, his second with Anaheim. That made the score 4-3 in the second period, but Pittsburgh extended the lead to two goals before the period was over.