Power Goes On, Ducks Turned Off : This Time, Intensity Is Missing

Welcome to the Mighty Ducks’ postseason, featuring rosters that wouldn’t look right in an exhibition game.

Duck Coach Pierre Page divided the final 21 games of the season into three seven-game “series” and told his team to treat them like the playoffs. Of course, that stretch of the imagination could be a little difficult to do since the very next day goaltender Guy Hebert said this had become a “rebuilding season.”

The way the Duck and King rosters have been depleted by injuries, asking anyone to think of their Monday night matchup at the Forum as a playoff game would be asking the impossible.

With no Paul Kariya (still recovering from a concussion) for the Ducks and the Kings missing Luc Robitaille (abdominal surgery) and Jozef Stumpel (bruised kidney), neither team looked like playoff material.

Even the Kings’ 4-3 overtime victory Monday night lacked the intensity--and a sellout crowd--that accompanied their overtime victory at the Forum Jan. 12.

When games in January bring more excitement than games in March, something’s wrong.

The problem is, it takes two teams with something at stake to make a great game, and King Coach Larry Robinson doesn’t have to manufacture a sense of urgency. His team has felt it after an 0-2-3 start but now has a 29-22-11 record.

The Ducks have suffered through four winless streaks of four games or longer and have won two or more consecutive games only four times.

All the Ducks have done for the majority of the season is put together a list of things that haven’t gone right. They had to deal with Kariya’s holdout (blame management and Kariya), changing systems and philosophies (blame the coaches) and a lack of scoring and physical punch (blame everyone except Teemu Selanne and Jeremy Stevenson).

They are a finesse team forced to make their push for the playoffs without the ultimate finesse player, Kariya. But even in the 22 games they had him they couldn’t position themselves into a comfortable place in the standings. That’s why they were the desperate-looking team, not the Kings.

The Kings do not have to panic while their stars sit out because they are in fifth place in the Western Conference, 11 points ahead of Edmonton, which occupies the eighth and final spot to qualify for the playoffs. The Ducks trail Edmonton by nine points and lead last-place Vancouver by only a point.

To put this in a form the folks at Disney would understand, the Kings are Magic Mountain and the Ducks are Knott’s Berry Farm.

And the Ducks have to make their run with seven players--more than a third of the roster--who have never played a full season in the NHL.

With Guy Hebert out with a strained right shoulder, the backup goaltender for Monday night’s game was Tom Askey, whose next NHL game will be his first.

Hebert is listed as day-to-day, but he’d better not be day-to-day for too many days. You have to wonder how sharp Mikhail Shtalenkov can stay over the next few, critical weeks.

Shtalenkov has played three games in a row only once this season. He has never played more than 30 NHL games in a season, but played his 24th Monday night. He also played in five games for Russia during the Winter Olympics.

Fans at the Forum knew better than to expect the stars such as Kariya and Stumpel on the ice. But it shouldn’t have been wishful thinking to ask for a shot on goal.

It took more than 7 1/2 minutes for the official shot to be recorded, when Matt Cullen put forth a weak effort that King goalie Stefane Fiset knocked away before it even reached the crease.

The Kings managed only one shot on their first power play, even though the puck didn’t leave the attacking zone until 15 seconds remained.

Shot totals after one period: Ducks 6, Kings 3.

Ratio of King fights to King shots on goal early in the second period: one to one.

For Selanne, it was just another night. He absorbed his shots (even Fiset upended him during a foray through the crease) and he fired his shots, including his 42nd goal of the season to tie the game in the third period.

Selanne remains the only consistent bright spot on the team, and it’s becoming more obvious (and more depressing) to think that a prime physical year of Kariya’s career will be a wash.

During the course of the season, Kariya and the Philadelphia Flyers’ Eric Lindros have gone from their little waiting game of seeing who would sign a new contract first to their new game of who will recover from a concussion first.

With the playoffs existing only in their minds, the Ducks should take whatever form of competition they can get.