Ducks Stay Unbeaten, but Pride is Bruised

Their unbeaten streak lives, it’s true.

The Mighty Ducks didn’t lose Friday night, for the 10th time in 10 games. But in the dressing room, the Ducks’ 4-4 tie against St. Louis had all the resonance of a loss.

The Ducks let a 4-3 lead in the final five minutes of the third period slip away from them in front of 17,174 at the Pond, and the Western Conference standings are that much tighter for it this morning, with the Ducks clinging to seventh place by two points.

In stark contrast to their gritty play of late, the Ducks gave St. Louis chances time and again and then left goalie Guy Hebert alone to face Joe Murphy’s shot from the slot.

Murphy, whose scoring slump has hurt St. Louis, made good on it with 3:42 left in regulation. It was his first goal since Jan. 29, a span of 18 games.

“It felt almost like a win to us,” Blues’ Coach Joel Quenneville said. “That’s the way it was on the bench and in the locker room.”

The sobering thought of the day for the Ducks is this: Despite their 6-0-4 run, they are still only seventh in the Western Conference, only two points ahead of eighth-place Chicago for the final playoff spot and only three points ahead of ninth-place Calgary.

Calgary, by the way, is the Ducks’ opponent Sunday in a crucial game at the Pond.

“It just seems like all the teams keep playing well, maybe with the exception of Vancouver,” said veteran Brian Bellows, who led the Ducks with two first-period goals. “We’ve gone 10 games without losing, but we’ve had some ties. Other teams might go 6-4, and have almost the same number of points. The only difference is, St. Louis and Edmonton used to be eight or nine points ahead and it looked like a three or four team race. Now it’s more like six, right together.”

The Ducks’ play has faltered at times during their unbeaten streak--the longest current streak in the NHL. But Hebert has been able to bail them out. This time they had a victory almost in hand, but there were too many mistakes.

“We had three opportunities to get the puck out of our end and didn’t,” Duck Coach Ron Wilson said. “We had five or six guys who didn’t want to be in our end in the third period. We had the game under control, but we made a lot of mental mistakes.”

The Ducks lost an opportunity Friday to leapfrog St. Louis, which is two points ahead of them after the tie.

And the Ducks must keep in mind that they still have a six-game trip--the longest of the season--ahead with 13 games remaining.

They lost a chance Friday to reach the .500 mark for the first time since Nov. 17, 1995, when they were 11-11. A .500 record might sound modest, but in the NHL it’s almost a sure ticket to the playoffs.

They led 1-0, then 2-1, then 3-2, then 4-3, and ended with a tie.

In a change of pace, Hebert actually looked fallible at times, allowing Brett Hull to tie the score, 3-3, in the second period when he gloved a shot, then bobbled it and saw it fall into the net.

Hull’s goal was his 40th, marking the eighth time he has scored at least 40 goals in 10 NHL seasons.

But the Ducks’ Steve Rucchin scored the go-ahead goal--his 15th--at 16:47 of the second period when he converted Teemu Selanne’s cross-ice pass.

Selanne didn’t have a goal, ending his four-game streak, and neither did Paul Kariya. The Ducks are 3-7-6 this season when neither has a goal.

The Blues’ first goal was hardly Hebert’s fault. The puck banked into net off defenseman Dmitri Mironov’s skates after it glanced off Hebert’s, and the Blues’ Robert Petrovicky was credited with the goal.