Ducks Have Change of Fortune in Boston

The Mighty Ducks received an embarrassment of riches one day, then got almost nothing the next.

“That’s hockey,” Teemu Selanne said after the Ducks were muzzled, 2-1, Saturday by the Boston Bruins at the FleetCenter. “Life goes on.”

The Ducks might have had their second victory in as many days, but for a dubious line change by the opposition, a few defensive breakdowns and plain old bad luck.

That’s hockey, all right.

Coulda, woulda, shoulda.

“We can’t accept just being close,” Coach Craig Hartsburg grumbled. “We need to go to another level [of play].”

The bottom line Saturday was that the Ducks didn’t capitalize on their scoring chances as they had in Friday’s 7-2 rout against the Buffalo Sabres.

Of course, there also was a distinct difference between Boston on Saturday and Buffalo on Friday: the Bruins actually bothered to play defense and the Sabres did not.

The Bruins did a pretty fair job of defending the Ducks from start to finish.

Selanne’s power-play goal with 45 seconds left in the second period was the Ducks’ only score.

It was Selanne’s fifth goal in the last three games and his team-leading 18th this season. Fredrik Olausson and Paul Kariya assisted on the goal, which tied the score, 1-1.

The Ducks got nothing else past Boston goalie Byron Dafoe, who stopped 29 of 30 shots.

Joe Thornton, on a power play at 8:15 of the second period, and Steve Heinze, at 10:28 of the third, scored the Bruins’ goals.

The legitimacy of Heinze’s goal was open to debate.

He made a terrific move to squeeze the puck past a sprawling Guy Hebert while on a three-on-two rush into the Duck zone.

But did Heinze jump over the boards to join the play before the Bruins completed a legal line change?

Hartsburg and the Ducks argued that the play should have been whistled dead because of an illegal substitution.

“Somebody came off the bench flying pretty good,” Hartsburg said of Heinze, who scored his 10th goal. “There was a questionable change there. They had all sorts of guys flying off the bench.”

What angered Hartsburg more was that his top line of Kariya, Selanne and Steve Rucchin was too fatigued to retreat to the bench for a line change after buzzing the Boston net in search of the go-ahead goal.

“We got caught on the ice for too long,” Hartsburg said. “The forwards should have gone off earlier. They were too tired to backcheck--that’s where the breakdown was.”

Heinze accepted a pass from Jason Allison, roared around flat-footed defenseman Dan Trebil and crossed up Hebert with a highlight reel move that brought the crowd of 17,565 to its feet.

“When he pulled the puck in front of me, I was a dead duck. No pun intended,” Hebert said. “I tried to stand my ground.

“More times than not, that’s the right play. Give him credit. It was a great move.”

It might have only been the tying goal if not for a dose of bad luck for Selanne, who had his first three-goal game this season in Friday’s victory over Buffalo.

Midway through the second period, Selanne raced past the Bruin defense for one of the few times Saturday, faked Dafoe to the ice and had an open net in which to deposit the puck.

But his shot bounced off the left goal post, disappeared beneath the former King goalie and, after a lengthy review by the video goal judge, was ruled to be no goal.

“I couldn’t believe it didn’t go in,” Selanne said. “We had our chances and couldn’t take advantage.”

Indeed, the Kariya-Rucchin-Selanne line had plenty of scoring opportunities again.

But the Ducks’ other lines didn’t accomplish much of anything during their shifts, which further upset Hartsburg.

The top line has accounted for seven of the Ducks’ 12 goals in the last five games.

“It was the type of game where somebody else has to step up and get a goal and we didn’t get it,” Hartsburg said. “We’ve got to get some chances, never mind scoring, from other guys. Everybody in the building is watching our top line. Somebody else has to step up.”