Ducks Playing Like Good-for-Nothings

Their power play is useless. Their penalty killing stinks. They seem to be skating through quicksand. The coach is upset. The captain is frustrated.

Can it get any worse for the Mighty Ducks than a listless 4-2 loss to the Ottawa Senators before a sellout crowd of 18,500 Saturday at the Corel Centre?

Of course.

Next stop: Detroit.

Remember, the Red Wings have ruled the Ducks with an iron fist since welcoming them to the NHL with a 7-2 drubbing on Oct. 8, 1993, at the Arrowhead Pond.

The Ducks have won only once at Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena and have been swept from the Stanley Cup playoffs by the Red Wings twice in the last three seasons.

So, if the Ducks don’t sort out their game by the opening faceoff Monday night, it probably will be the same old same old at Detroit.

“We’re playing just good enough not to win,” said center Matt Cullen, who joined goalie Guy Hebert as perhaps the only Duck bright lights for the second consecutive game.

“We’re skating just fast enough to get there too late to get the puck. We can look at it like, ‘Oh, God, we’re losing and we’ve got to play Detroit next.’ Or we can approach it like this is an opportunity to turn it around against Detroit. What a great thing it would be to turn it around against Detroit.”

Don’t bet on it, though.

After all, the Ducks’ all-time record against Detroit is 4-15-5--not counting the eight postseason defeats. Plus, the Ducks are mired in their first bona fide slump of the season.

Certainly, there were signs the Ducks were better Saturday against Ottawa than they were in Thursday’s 2-1 loss against the Montreal Canadiens.

The Ducks rallied twice from one-goal deficits and seemed to have grabbed the momentum when Cullen set up winger Jeff Nielsen for a third-period goal and a 2-2 tie at 7:28.

But Shawn McEachern’s power-play goal at 13:46 proved to be the winner. It also was the last of three Ottawa power-play goals. Marian Hossa and Radek Bonk scored second-period power-play goals.

Bonk added an empty-net goal in the game’s final minute.

Nielsen’s goal and captain Paul Kariya’s second-period score came while the teams were at even strength. The Ducks went scoreless in three chances with the man advantage, running their streak without a power-play goal to four consecutive games.

The Ducks began play Saturday with the NHL’s 23rd-ranked power play. Their penalty killing was 24th. It almost figured that their special teams would take a beating against Ottawa.

But it didn’t make it any easier to accept for Duck Coach Craig Hartsburg. Or for Kariya, who quarterbacked the Duck power play to a league-best 22% success rate last season.

“Our power play has been just terrible,” Hartsburg said after the Ducks’ success rate with the man advantage fell to 12.5%. “It’s silly reads around the net by our defensemen [while short-handed]. All their goals tonight were from six feet of our net.”

Kariya knows the secret: more hard work.

“It’s not a question of talent,” Kariya said. “It’s a question of work ethic. . . . I thought our effort was better than Thursday, but we’ve played 10 or 12 games this season better than this one.”

A 2-0 victory Tuesday over the Toronto Maple Leafs--in the first game of this four-game trip--ranked among the Ducks’ best all-around efforts. The Ducks used their speed, skill and smarts to subdue the Maple Leafs and extend an unbeaten streak to 2-0-1.

The victory also put the Ducks two games over .500. But consecutive losses have dropped them right back to .500 at 8-8-2-1.

“I thought we had spurts where we played well,” Kariya said of Saturday’s defeat, only the Ducks’ second in their history against Ottawa. “I think at times we did get frustrated. But it’s not going to do anyone any good to be frustrated. Five on five, we beat them, 2-0, but our power play and our penalty killing have got to improve.”