Haller Defends Salei’s Defense

Among the many concerns about the Ducks going into their first-round playoff series against the Detroit Red Wings was their inexperienced defense. After all, of their top six defensemen, only Kevin Haller and Fredrik Olausson had played more than seven postseason games.

So, it wasn’t a shock to see Ruslan Salei, for instance, struggle during the Ducks’ 5-1 loss Friday in Game 2. Salei was on the ice for all five of Detroit’s goals.

“You don’t worry about ‘Rusty,’ ” Haller said of Salei. “He’s a pretty solid guy. I just talked to him and told him there were a couple of unlucky plays that led to goals. He shouldn’t worry about it.”

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The Red Wings have been masters of their own domain, winning the first two games at Joe Louis Arena to raucous cheers.

The Arrowhead Pond can be a rather sedate place, but Paul Kariya hoped the Ducks would get a boost from the home fans in Game 3 today.

“We have to be excited about playing in our building,” he said. “It always helps us to play at home. We’ve been a good home team all year. We’ve played tougher at home.”

The Ducks were 21-14-6 at the Pond, 14-20-7 on the road during the regular season. Their only win in four regular-season tries against Detroit came in a 3-1 victory March 7 at the Pond.

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Detroit Coach Scotty Bowman wasn’t concerned about the prospects of defending Kariya and Teemu Selanne if Hartsburg splits up his all-star wingers for Game 3.

After all, Bowman can play defensemen Chris Chelios and Ulf Samuelsson together or he can put Chelios with Nicklas Lidstrom or Larry Murphy and still have a second pairing of Samuelsson and Lidstrom or Samuelsson and Murphy.

Either way, Bowman has two sets of hard-nosed defense pairings if Hartsburg decides to play Kariya and Selanne on different lines.

“We know they’re going to play Kariya a lot,” Bowman said. “I’m sure they’re going to play him even more. They didn’t play him as much [in Game 2] because of the score.”