Ducks Tie--and Anger--St. Louis

So it wasn’t great hockey, but at least it wasn’t dull--especially not for Brett Hull, whose hand was broken by Tomas Sandstrom’s first-period slash.

Hull will be out for up to three weeks and the St. Louis Blues, who were tied, 5-5, Saturday night by the Mighty Ducks, were not amused.

The Ducks and Blues raced all over the Kiel Center ice. They scored all sorts of strange and wonderful goals. They whacked each other against the boards.

When the ice shavings settled, they could not break free from each other and settled for the tie in front of 20,381.

In the end, it seemed a fitting conclusion since neither team distinguished itself.

St. Louis, perhaps smarting from a lackluster, 4-1, loss to the Chicago Blackhawks on Friday, came out sizzling in the first period. The Blues built a 3-1 lead after 10 minutes.

The Ducks, sluggish after four days without practicing, rallied impressively to tie the score by the end of the second period. They then seized a 5-3 lead early in the third period.

But the Blues roared back to tie it with less than five minutes to play in regulation on a goal by former Duck Jim Campbell.

Neither side was particularly overjoyed by the outcome, least of all the Blues. They were forced to play the final two periods plus overtime without Hull after he was hit by Sandstrom.

Sandstrom later was high-sticked in the face by St. Louis’ Darren Turcotte, but it appeared to be accidental and not a payback.

“Just a cut,” Sandstrom said of his injury. “Who got Hull, anyway?”

When he finally confessed, Sandstrom protested, “It wasn’t a bad slash, though.”

The Ducks’ future certainly appears to be a bit brighter than Hull’s going into tonight’s game against Chicago.

First and foremost, their power play clicked like never before in the franchise’s five-year history. They scored a club-record four power-play goals.

Teemu Selanne scored his NHL-leading 31st goal, on terrific Tic-Tac-Toe passing from Paul Kariya to Dmitri Mironov to Steve Rucchin to Selanne. Kariya scored his fifth goal in six games since signing a two-year, $14-million contract Dec. 11.

And Warren Rychel scored twice--once on the power play and once at even strength--to highlight the Ducks’ second-period rally. He narrowly missed his first three-goal game, but St. Louis defenseman Chris Pronger deflected Scott Young’s shot from the blue line into the net before Rychel could get to it.

“Checkers like myself like to get rewarded with a goal once in a while,” Rychel said. “It was good to contribute, to get us back into the game.”

Power-play goals by Kariya and Young gave the Ducks a 5-3 lead 4:54 into the third period, but it soon disappeared.

Geoff Courtnall, who always seemed to be around the puck, took off on a two-on-one break with Harry York. Instead of shooting, Courtnall tried to pass to York, which crossed up goaltender Guy Hebert.

Defenseman David Karpa had it played perfectly, but the puck bounced off his right leg as he dived to block the pass and it wound up in the back of the net at 6:09.

“I have no idea what Courtnall was doing passing the puck,” Hebert groused later.

Ruslan Salei’s poor clearing pass then enabled the Blues to tie it at 15:42. Pascal Rheaume intercepted the pass, danced around Salei and fed the puck to Campbell at the right goalpost.

Campbell couldn’t have missed the open net if he tried.

“We’re going to have to keep our goals against down,” Rychel said. “Tonight was unacceptable. We had a bad first period, then got back into it. . . . It would have been nice to start off the trip with a win, but I’m sure we’ll talk about that [today].

“Those costly giveaways in the third period hurt us.”

The Ducks didn’t come close to scoring again after goals only 1:11 apart by Kariya and Young.