Ducks Still Trapped in Maze of Mediocrity

The Santa Ana winds blew outside, making funny noises, causing baseball caps to skitter across the parking lot at the Arrowhead Pond.

And the men who once wore those caps went diving for their headgear fast and hard. Inside the arena, the Mighty Ducks and Kings did the same, chasing a skittering puck. Fast and hard until an ending that was a little bit pleasing and a little unsatisfying too. Same as the Ducks’ season so far.

This was a particularly lifeless first meeting of the season between the Mighty Ducks and Kings and nothing was settled in the 1-1 tie.

Duck Coach Craig Hartsburg said afterward that this was “a good tie. We deserved better. We deserved to win because it was a good effort by our team, the type of effort that I need and I want. Even if we had lost, I would have said ‘that’s the way the puck bounces.’ ”

But during the game there was no crackle of electric emotion, no powerful surge of noise, no thrilling play that would raise a goose bump of excitement.

Most of the penalties made you go ‘Huh?’ Like when the Ducks’ Antti Aalto got caught for holding someone’s stick. Aalto wasn’t near a stick. Didn’t have his hand up. Maybe he was thinking about holding somebody’s stick in some other universe while he sat out the two-minute punishment.

The two goals came within two minutes of each other in the first period. Craig Johnson scored for the Kings and then Pavel Trnka for the Ducks. Right back at ya. And then? Nobody came really close to scoring again.

By the time the four-on-four overtime arrived, it didn’t seem as if any Duck or any King even had enough nerve to move into overdrive or knock somebody down or take any risk to try and score. Fans were leaving during overtime.

Mike Leclerc of the Ducks and Ian Laperriere got into one little fight, threw some feathery punches, maybe brushed each other’s cheek with a fist, but that was it for any display of particular dislike. There were clots of empty seats everywhere too.

OK. With 12:37 left in the third period, Jim McKenzie did slam Aki Berg into the boards. And more. Berg hit with such force that one of those giant panes of plexiglass, which are supposed to keep folks from getting a puck in the nose, instead landed in the laps of a few people in the front row. This caused an outpouring of noise for it hinted that, for a moment anyway, a Duck and a King were going at something hard.

But otherwise, the best entertainment of the evening came on the big screen TV on the scoreboard when, during a timeout, Ducks answered questions such as “Boxers or briefs?” Boxers. And, who is the best-dressed Duck? Teemu Selanne. And Teemu voted for himself. Funny bit.

Eight hours before this game, backup goalie Dominic Roussel had trundled into the Mighty Duck locker room after the morning skate. He heard the sounds of. . . . nothing and yelled, “Where’s the music? Why’s it so quiet in here? Let’s make some noise.” He got no answer, heard only his echo.

In a corner, Paul Kariya was explaining, with a hint of anger, a note of sharpness in his voice, that he was a little tired of hearing about how the Ducks were better than their .500 record.

That is what everybody has been saying. Any day now the Ducks will win five, six, seven games in a row. “It’s unacceptable, this record,” Kariya said sternly. “But that’s what the record says and so that’s how we have played. A lot of [the bad losses] are because some individuals don’t understand how to be a good professional every night.”

Beating defending Stanley Cup champion Dallas on the road last week, 4-2, that was a professional effort, Kariya said. Losing at home on Wednesday, 4-2, to terrible Tampa Bay, that was not a professional effort.

Last season, Hartsburg had said, when the Ducks were .500 at this time of the season, it was considered a very good thing. Hartsburg chided us all a little when he said he was too early to be disgusted by a .500 team now. And it’s not that .500 is so awful. It is just that the Ducks have fallen twice, 2-1 each time, to the floundering Montreal Canadiens. It is just that the Ducks haven’t won three games in a row this season. It is just that they have raised our hopes and expectations.

So, do something already now, would ya?

That’s what the fans seem to be saying, the ones who come and sit silently and the ones who don’t come at all.

For another night, though, the Ducks are a .500 team. They outshot the Kings, 35-20. That was what made Hartsburg happy. But so what? The division-leading Kings could settle for a tie. The cellar-dwelling Ducks shouldn’t.

The cellar-dwelling Ducks need a jump start, a big victory, followed by another and another and another. If Anaheim wins tonight at Phoenix, comes home Wednesday and beats Vancouver, then this tie on Friday will look better. Then it will truly be a “good” tie. If the Ducks lose tonight, it will just be proof again that this is just a .500 team.

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com