Ducks Deflate Quickly on Road

The streak had to end on some night in some foreign arena. But the Mighty Ducks hoped it wouldn’t end the way it did here Monday against the Edmonton Oilers.

The Ducks got the start they wanted, but collapsed in the second and third periods en route to a 4-1 defeat that ended their NHL-leading road winning streak at five games.

Maybe it was the weather.

The Ducks have played some of their best, most consistent hockey this season far from balmy Southern California. But they arrived in the Great White North to find sunny skies and temperatures in the 60s.

That’s 60 degrees above zero, close to an Edmonton record for the date. Break out the shorts and flip flops, eh?

It was probably as good a reason as any for the Ducks’ Arrowhead Pond-like demonstration of short attention-span hockey Monday.

At game’s end, the Ducks knew what went wrong after building a 1-0 lead. Why the Ducks faltered so badly in the final 40 minutes was a mystery, however.

“Ask some of those guys about it,” Coach Craig Hartsburg said, nodding in the direction of the Duck dressing room. “Maybe they’ll give you an answer. I don’t know why we changed our game.”

As has become their custom on the road, the Ducks played their patient style to near perfection in the first period. They skated with determination, won battles for loose pucks, threw tough checks and made the Oilers look bad.

The Ducks also had started to play that way at home, a big reason for their 6-2-2 record in their last 10 games before Monday’s loss.

Center Tony Hrkac finished off a give-and-go with winger Mike Leclerc to give the Ducks a 1-0 lead at 9:33 of the first period.

The Ducks then buzzed Tommy Salo’s net, looking for more. By period’s end, the Ducks had outshot the Oilers, 16-7. It was the most shots the Ducks have had in the first period of any game this season.

Slowly but surely, the Ducks melted away like most of the snow around Edmonton has during the recent heat wave.

“I think we expected it to be a cakewalk,” left wing Paul Kariya said. “It was another lesson. We thought if we just threw our sticks out there we could win. We forgot about the effort it takes to win.”

Indeed.

The Ducks were quickly humbled by a smooth-skating team.

Edmonton’s Todd Marchant scored the tying goal 6:43 into the second period. Bill Guerin, Pat Falloon and Marchant broke the game open with goals in a span of 3:33 early in the third.

“It was still 1-1 going into the third period, but we didn’t have the same sense of urgency we had to start the game,” Hartsburg said. “And we had great urgency to start the game. For some reason we weren’t as hungry.”

Guerin’s go-ahead goal was a perfect example of the Ducks’ failures. Guerin raced over the blue line with plenty of space to create a good scoring chance, then dropped the puck to a trailing Doug Weight.

Goalie Dominic Roussel easily handled Weight’s long-range shot, but he left the rebound for Guerin. Since no one bothered to lay a finger on Guerin as he charged to the front of the net, he had an easy tap-in for a 2-1 Edmonton lead 3:07 into the final period.

“Every shift is so important,” right wing Teemu Selanne said. “It’s weird how fast the momentum changes.”

It was difficult to pinpoint precisely when and where the Ducks lost the momentum and the Oilers grabbed it. The drop of the puck to start the second period was probably the turning point.

“It’s like boxing,” Selanne said, searching high and low for answers. “You have one bad round and the other guy can take advantage.”

The Oilers certainly pounced the moment the Ducks eased their pressure to start the second period.

“In the first period, we were all over them,” Selanne said. “Then we gave those guys some life. Credit them. They used their momentum well.

“We know what we have to do. We’ve always been honest with ourselves. We have to learn something from this and be better in Calgary.”

The third stop on this four-game trip is Wednesday against the Flames at Calgary.