Now Push Has Come to Shove

The series has featured close games, ferocious checking, spectacular goals that counted and controversial goals that didn’t.

Now Mighty Duck Coach Ron Wilson sounds as if he’s trying to turn up the heat.

“They’ve been talking about going at Paul [Kariya] and Teemu [Selanne]; we are going to go at Keith Tkachuk and Cliff Ronning and Jeremy Roenick. They had better come here with their skates laced up tight,” Wilson said as the Ducks prepared for Thursday night’s fifth game of the teams’ Western Conference playoff series against the Phoenix Coyotes.

The Ducks won the first two at home, then the Coyotes came back to even the series by taking both games in Phoenix, including goalie Nikolai Khabibulin’s 2-0 shutout Tuesday.

So, home-ice advantage is beginning to look critical for the Ducks, who haven’t lost at the Pond since Feb. 2, a 16-game span in which they’ve gone 12-0-4.

Wilson, still bristling at the manner in which an apparent Anaheim goal was disallowed in Tuesday’s game, also was not happy with what he perceived to be unnecessary roughness on the Coyotes’ part.

He claimed that some of the Ducks have been losing their helmets a little too frequently--with the help of the Coyotes--in action out of the sight of the referee.

“Helmets don’t just come off,” Wilson said Wednesday after practice. “They come off with a punch to the back of the head. . . . I guess we’re going to have to knock a few helmets off when the referee’s not looking.”

The Coyotes have been focusing on stopping the Ducks’ high-scoring duo of Kariya and Selanne, and essentially have neutralized them since they did all of the scoring in Anaheim’s 4-2 opening victory.

The Ducks, meanwhile, have been concerned with containing Tkachuk, who led the NHL with 52 goals this season and has scored three in the playoffs.

“We have to play tight on Keith,” Wilson said. “If he wants to spend some time in the penalty box, that’s great.”

The fourth game produced the sixth disallowed goal in the series, with each team having three apparent scores waved off. Steve Rucchin knocked the puck into the net to give Anaheim an apparent 1-0 lead with 8:02 left in the game, but a video review showed that Duck defenseman Brian Bellows had a skate in the crease and the goal was disallowed.

Wilson, who would not comment on the play after the game, said Wednesday he didn’t dispute the fact that Bellows’ skate was in the crease. But he believes Tkachuk talked the official into reviewing the play--and a player is not supposed to have a say in whether there’s a replay.

“It certainly appeared to me that Keith badgered them into going upstairs. He skated all the way across the ice with the linesman,” Wilson said. “It took 1:05 before they went upstairs.”

After the goal was waved off, it took just 47 seconds for the Coyotes’ Bob Corkum, a former Duck, to put Phoenix ahead, 1-0. An empty-net goal by Teppo Numminen with six seconds to go provided the final margin.

Rucchin, who also thought Tkachuk talked the officials into the review, said the Ducks have to put all that behind them, saying that the series has been a good, competitive one so far, and he expects it to be even more so the rest of the way.

“I think the intensity will pick up,” he said. “It’s going to be interesting to see how the next games go. We’ve been in these types of games the last two months, like it’s 0-0 with a few minutes to play.

“We know how to react. We’re confident.”

Although the Ducks won the first two games at Anaheim, the Coyotes kept the outcome in doubt until the Ducks got empty-net goals in the closing seconds and won by identical 4-2 scores.

“We’re in good position right now, but they still have the home ice, and they play well there, so we still have our work cut out for us,” Tkachuk said.

Coach Don Hay, whose Coyotes seemed in deep trouble as they headed back home last week after two losses in Anaheim, isn’t worried about playing two of the final three games, if the series goes that far, on the Ducks’ ice.

“We have confidence that we can play well on the road. We’ve proven all year that we can go into tough buildings and get wins,” Hay said. “We’ve always been able to rebound and respond.”