Ducks Hope to Get Better Early Effort

Hockeytown. Yeah, yeah. Brendan Shanahan. Sure, whatever. Steve Yzerman. Right. Red Wings. Greatest hockey team since the invention of ice.

The Mighty Ducks certainly had their fill of Detroit after spending a month there last week. They trail the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Red Wings two games to none in their best-of-seven, first-round playoff series. They also have been outscored, 10-4, and outshot, 73-60.

But the view certainly looked a great deal better when the Ducks awoke at home Saturday morning.

Was that the sun? And were those palm trees swaying in the gentle breeze?

Good, it must have all been a ghastly nightmare.

Well, not so fast.

In reality, the Ducks are in serious trouble going into Game 3 at noon today at the Arrowhead Pond. A bit of home cooking and an afternoon and evening at home with the family can only cure so many ills.

So, Coach Craig Hartsburg gathered the Ducks around him for a 15-minute meeting and pep talk Saturday afternoon at the team’s Anaheim practice facility. The topic should have been obvious to anyone who witnessed the Ducks’ 5-1 loss Friday in Game 2 and a 5-3 defeat Wednesday in Game 1.

“It’s all in our hands,” captain Paul Kariya said when asked what was said behind closed doors. “We want to play the type of game where afterward we’re all exhausted. We can’t say that about our first two games.”

Hartsburg said he hammered away at the notion of winning individual battles, which could lead to coming out ahead after the first period, which could ignite a victory.

None of which has happened in the first two games, mainly because Shanahan, Yzerman and the rest of the Red Wings have been so efficient in the first period of each game.

Shanahan had two goals and an assist in the first period of Game 2 and Yzerman had a first-period goal en route to a hat trick in Game 1.

“I think they were good,” Hartsburg said of the Red Wings. “But it was because of us. We made some mistakes and against that team, you can’t do that. Everybody has to step up.”

Hartsburg said he plans to make no major changes for Game 3, but indicated he might tinker with his lines. Kariya and Teemu Selanne didn’t find much open ice until the third period in Game 2, when the Ducks faced a five-goal deficit.

Selanne, the NHL’s leading goal scorer with 47 during the regular season, has two goals in the series. But they have come in the final period of each game. He has been neutralized in the first two periods of each game by the Red Wings’ left-wing lock, a more offensive-oriented variation on the neutral-zone trap.

But more to the point, the Ducks must begin today’s game with far more energy and emotion than they did in either of the first two games. The Ducks were knocked from one end of Joe Louis Arena to the other in the first 20 minutes of each game. They trailed, 2-1, in Game 1 and, 4-0, in Game 2.

“All systems are geared to stopping people,” Hartsburg said when asked about the Red Wings’ defensive success against Selanne. “You have to fight through it. We’ve got to fight through it. A lot of this game is one-on-one battles. We’re not winning enough one-on-one battles.”

The Ducks certainly put up a fight in the third period Friday.

Or rather enforcer Stu Grimson did, wailing away at Detroit defenseman Chris Chelios. Grimson also tangled with Detroit’s Darren McCarty, who came to Chelios’ rescue.

Defenseman Jamie Pushor ignited the rough stuff by giving Detroit pest Kris Draper a whiff of the palm of his sweaty glove, performing what the players refer to as a face wash.

That’s the sort of edginess that has been missing from the Ducks’ game so far. The Ducks haven’t hit the Red Wings and, as a result, they have poured into the attacking zone without missing a stride.

The Ducks’ passive play has resulted in ineffective forecheck that as taking a step forward.”

ing. It was no surprise Friday that less than three minutes after Grimson’s mugging of Chelios, Selanne scored to end Red Wing goalie Chris Osgood’s shutout bid.

“You just have to simplify things,” Kariya said. “It’s a cliche, but we have to play one shift, one period, one game at a time. If you look at it and say, ‘Can we win four games?’ That’s a daunting task. You have to say, ‘Can we win one game here [today]?’

“We know what’s wrong. We know how to fix it.”

Apart from starting the game with more intensity, the Ducks must avoid the penalty box at all costs in the first period. The Red Wings scored twice on the power-play in the first period in Game 2.

The Duck power-play hasn’t been too shabby, accounting for two of their four goals in the series. Goaltender Guy Hebert has stood up to the Red Wing pressure about as well as could be expected.

“Adrenaline has to carry us right now,” Hartsburg said. “There’s no excuses right now. We haven’t used them all year. We’re certainly not going to start using them now.

“We’re down. We can’t look at the big picture. We have to look at the small picture. We talked today about the way we played in the third period Friday. We have to build on that. We have to look at that as taking a step forward.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS

DETROIT vs. MIGHTY DUCKS

Red Wings lead best-of-

seven series, 2-0

GAME 3

Today at the Pond, noon, Channel 11

NOTES

Defensive inexperience hurts Ducks.

Page 12

ELSEWHERE

Coyotes even series with overtime win. Page 12