Waiting Game Next for Mighty Ducks

The schedule that once was brutal is now blessed.

When the Mighty Ducks play the first Stanley Cup playoff game in franchise history on April 16 or 17, they will be the NHL’s most rested team.

They play only two games over the final nine days of the regular season, and will have at least four days to rest between their final game Friday in San Jose and their playoff debut.

That’s time for goalie Guy Hebert to recover his strength and sharpness, time for Paul Kariya to rest his sore groin. It’s time for Teemu Selanne to recover from the muscle strain that cost him four games and time for everyone’s bumps to shrink and bruises to fade.

The Ducks were playing their seventh game in 11 days Friday and became the first NHL team to reach 80 games as they clinched a playoff spot with a 3-2 victory over Dallas. They are one of only four teams that will finish the season Friday--Florida and the Rangers also finish, but Phoenix is the only potential opponent that completes its season early.

If the Ducks were going to have to watch TV next weekend to see if they made the playoffs, this slow wrap-up would be agonizing.

But because it’s only a question of whom they will play--Colorado, Dallas, Detroit, Phoenix, Edmonton, St. Louis--Coach Ron Wilson figures it will be rejuvenating.

He immediately declared it “time to rest” after Friday’s victory and gave the team the next two days off.

“I’ve put pressure on them for five months, as if every night was the last game of their lives and my last game as coach,” Wilson said. “We could have buckled under the pressure. We bent, but never broke.”

The final two games--against the Kings on Wednesday and at San Jose on Friday--are far from meaningless, however. Unless the playoff matchups are clinched--extremely unlikely, considering at least four games factor into the seedings over the final two days--the Ducks aren’t likely to ease up much.

“We still have two important games, because obviously home-ice is not out of the question,” Kariya said.

If they finish fourth in the conference, the Ducks would start the playoffs at home--and play a seventh and deciding game of their first-round series at the Pond, if it came to that.

Two more victories will give the Ducks 85 points, but Phoenix, for example, has four games left and would need only five points to edge the Ducks out of home-ice advantage--the equivalent of a 2-1-1 record.

If the Ducks don’t win home-ice advantage, finishing fifth through eighth, the first playoff game at the Pond will be either April 20 or 21.

(The NHL follows a 2-2-1-1-1 format throughout the playoffs, except for a rarely-used provision that allows the higher-seeded team to choose a 2-3-2 series if a Pacific Division team meets a Central Division team at the beginning of the playoffs.)

The Ducks might have to wait until next Sunday to know who their opponent will be, and the NHL might not announce until Monday which of the series will begin on April 16 and which on April 17. (The schedule calls for one day between each game in the first round, except for a two-day break after the fourth game.)

The Ducks will be starting something that could last a week--four games and out. Or two months--the seventh game of the Stanley Cup finals is scheduled for June 17, if necessary.

Best to get their rest while they can.