Road Gets Tougher for Ducks

Well, the Mighty Ducks can cancel their reservations in Phoenix. They aren’t headed there to play the fast-fading Coyotes in the opening round of the Stanley Cup playoffs next week.

Detroit? Yes, that seems like a logical destination for the Ducks. But after a 4-3 overtime loss Thursday to the Kings at the Great Western Forum, the Ducks could wind up in Denver to play the Colorado Avalanche.

The St. Louis Blues clinched fifth place in the Western Conference with a 6-4 come-from-behind victory Thursday over the fourth-place Coyotes. St. Louis and Phoenix will play in the first round.

A victory Saturday against the Sharks at San Jose in the regular-season finale will give the Ducks sixth place and a match up against the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Red Wings.

However, if seventh-place San Jose defeats the Kings tonight and the Ducks on Saturday, the Sharks will finish sixth and the Ducks would be seventh and have to play Colorado.

Not that the Ducks seemed particularly concerned about their playoff opponent. They said their focus these last few games wasn’t so much on finishing fifth in order to face the Coyotes, but picking up momentum and confidence for the start of the playoffs.

“If we got that fifth spot do you think Phoenix was going to just let us just walk all over them?” Duck captain Paul Kariya said after the Ducks fell to 2-5-1 in April. “We’ve got to look forward to it [playing Detroit or Colorado] and enjoy those confrontations.”

The Ducks seemed primed to overtake St. Louis, but like the Blues’ game in Phoenix, the game at the Forum turned in the third period.

The Coyotes had a 2-1 lead over the Blues, but collapsed in the final 20 minutes. The Ducks had a 2-1 lead over the Kings in the third, but fell victim to a couple of breakdowns that forced the game to overtime.

Fredrik Olausson scored the go-ahead goal for the Ducks at 19:56 of the second period. But Doug Bodger and Luc Robitaille scored a franchise-record six seconds apart to give the Kings a 3-2 lead.

Teemu Selanne countered for the Ducks with his NHL-leading 47th goal less than a minute later, at the 8:17 mark of the third period.

Ray Ferraro then scored the second of his two goals 2:21 into the five-minute overtime period while the Kings had a two-man advantage, an almost unheard of situation.

But referee Dan Marouelli whistled the Ducks for having too many men on the ice only 45 seconds into overtime. Then, Marouelli whistled Duck forward Ted Drury for hooking Olli Jokinen at 1:12.

Asked about having to play two men short in overtime, left wing Jim McKenzie merely stuffed a sock into his mouth.

Said Kariya: “There was a lot worse stuff that was going on all game that didn’t get called.”

One night after kicking the St. Louis Blues from one end of the Arrowhead Pond to the other, but losing, 3-1, the Ducks came out playing the same swarming style against the Kings.

Like Wednesday, the Ducks weren’t rewarded for their hard-charging style of play. Tomas Sandstrom’s goal only 2:12 into the game gave the Ducks a 1-0 lead. But Ferraro countered for the Kings with a power-play goal at 8:12 of the first period.

The Ducks were forced to make do Wednesday against the Kings with a youthful third defense pairing of Dan Trebil and Scott Ferguson. But they did get center Steve Rucchin, battling a groin strain, back in the lineup for the first time in eight games.

The team’s party line was that defensemen Jason Marshall and Pavel Trnka were not injured Thursday, but merely resting up for the postseason.

Marshall was rocked by a high, hard, but legal check from Phoenix’s Dallas Drake in the Ducks’ 3-0 victory Sunday over the Coyotes. Trnka received a tough check during the loss Wednesday against the Blues.

But neither player was listed among the Ducks’ injured for Thursday’s game, a violation of NHL media policy if indeed the players were unable to play because of injuries.

“There are no injuries,” Duck General Manager Pierre Gauthier said when asked why neither Marshall nor Trnka was in the lineup.