Ducks Finally Get It in Gear

One more time, the Mighty Ducks’ playoff push starts now.

It was supposed to begin weeks ago, but the Ducks have been like an engine that won’t stay running. They rev, then they sputter and cough. They haven’t won two games in a row since early January.

A loss against Phoenix on Saturday afternoon could have been crushing--especially on the heels of the ugly defeat they were dealt by the Kings on Thursday. But the Ducks pulled out a 4-2 victory over the Coyotes in front of 17,174 at the Pond of Anaheim.

“We knew this was the biggest game for us of the year,” said Teemu Selanne, who had a goal and two assists, as did Paul Kariya. “[But] tomorrow will be more important, and maybe the game after that will be even more important than that.”

The Ducks are right back at it today against Vancouver, a team that, like Phoenix, for now has one of the eight Western Conference playoff spots. The Ducks are in 10th place with 22 games to play.

The best news for the Ducks is that the game is at home, where they are 16-12-2 and have won seven of their last eight, a stark contrast to their 8-18-4 record on the road.

The importance of reaching the playoffs this season is difficult to overstate. The Ducks have been trying for four seasons and have two of the best players in the game in Selanne and Kariya.

Their 1993 expansion twin, Florida, made it to the Stanley Cup finals last season, after the Ducks failed to make the playoffs by one point. That leaves the Ducks and Ottawa as the only teams among the five recent expansion franchises that have yet to make the playoffs--and Ottawa is threatening in the East.

“We’ve been through some hard times, up and down. We really want to get in there this year,” said right wing Joe Sacco, who scored the go-ahead goal 1:16 into the final period against Phoenix, putting the puck in after hard work around the net by J.F. Jomphe and Brian Bellows.

Sacco is one of only three remaining original Ducks after Garry Valk was traded to Pittsburgh for defenseman J.J. Daigneault on Friday.

Daigneault arrived from Pittsburgh about 1 a.m. Saturday morning and was in the lineup at noon. The Ducks had been playing with a shallow and inexperienced defense corps, partly because of injuries, and Daigneault, 31, immediately became the senior member, with 692 games of NHL experience.

“I think we addressed a need,” said Bobby Dollas, whose 434 games rank second. Dmitri Mironov has 335, and the other defensemen have the equivalent of a season or less.

“It was something we needed to get done, add a little more depth defensively,” Dollas said. “You can tell he’s an experienced guy the way he moves the puck, the way he doesn’t make risky plays.”

Coach Ron Wilson was pleased with Daigneault and certainly with the result, but he still found fault with the performance. The Ducks allowed Phoenix to score twice during the second period--the first when a pass by Kariya was picked off and Mike Gartner scored on the counterattack, and the second with only 14 seconds left in the period.

Selanne started the Ducks off by scoring his 35th goal of the season only 32 seconds into the game, the fourth time in two months the Ducks have scored a goal in the first minute.

Steve Rucchin gave the Ducks a 2-1 lead in the second, and Kariya scored the game’s final goal, his 28th, with 40 seconds left in the game during a long power play after Jeremy Roenick was given a double minor for cutting Rucchin with a careless high stick.

As soon as the game was over, Selanne said the Ducks had to forget it. They haven’t won consecutive games since Jan. 10 and 12, and have done it only seven times all season, with no winning streak longer than three games.

As Kariya said after Thursday’s loss, sometimes after the Ducks win, “we think we’re God’s gift to hockey.”

“We talked about that after the game,” Dollas said. “We said, ‘OK, good game.’ But right now we need to put a string together. We can’t say, ‘OK, now we’ll win the Stanley Cup.’ We’ve got a big game [today] and we have to play the same way. We get a little complacent sometimes. Now we have to get the points.”