Slight Push, Scary Result

You couldn’t even call it a hit.

Ruslan Salei shoved Mike Modano. Kind of. You almost couldn’t even call it a shove. A tap, maybe, on Modano’s back, as the Dallas center was skating at top speed and a little off-balance.

That tap, that little two-handed push, the kind you give to the kid who just cut in front of you in the lunch line, knocked Modano off his feet, out of kilter and slamming head-first into the boards.

For nearly 10 minutes Modano lay on the ice, not moving. A deathly silence filled Reunion Arena and the silence, in its way, was louder than any cheers the defending Stanley Cup champions have heard in the first two days of this new NHL season.

Finally a stretcher was brought out and Modano, wearing a brace on his neck and with his eyes filled with terror, was slid by six men onto the stretcher and wheeled off the ice.

Two hours later, after the game, won by Dallas 2-0 on the scoreboard but by the feisty Ducks if you count all the hard hits and black eyes and reddened noses they dished out, it was announced that Modano had a concussion and a badly strained neck pending further tests to be done overnight.

But when Modano’s head hit the board, that was a moment that makes you forget.

Forget about the game, about the speed and grace of these hockey players, about how high are the hopes of the Ducks, of how eagerly this season is awaited. It makes you forget about how exuberant were the Stars a night earlier when they were honored at the season opener as holders of the neatest trophy in sports, the Stanley Cup.

Just a few minutes before his crash, Modano had been beamed onto the arena’s big-screen TV, talking about the off-season. He had recently gotten engaged to his high school sweetheart, Modano said, “because I wanted to get it over with.” And then he dug himself a deeper hole. “I haven’t found anyone better,” Modano said at the end of the interview.

While everybody was still laughing about the greeting Modano was going to get from his fiancee after that romantic story, Modano’s head smashed into the boards. His helmet flew and on the TV replay, it seemed as if Modano’s head had no more hardness than a ripe peach the way it gave way to the wood.

“I’ve never seen anyone’s head hit anything that hard in my life,” Paul Kariya said afterward.

The Ducks were solemn in the locker room after their season-opening loss and it wasn’t the loss that caused the downcast eyes.

Kariya knows about hard hits. He knows about concussions and unconsciousness and the fear that invades the heart of an athlete when he doesn’t know what happened or how or whether he will feel better in the future. Kariya missed 28 games of the 1997-98 season with post-concussion syndrome, yet said Saturday night that the way his head had been whacked by the stick of Gary Suter was nothing like what Kariya had just seen.

“I was scared,” Kariya said. The Anaheim star didn’t dress for this game, opting for cautious treatment of a nagging hip injury. “I couldn’t believe how hard Mike’s head hit the board.”

Salei, an engaging 24-year-old from Belarus, wanted to say first of all and most of all that he was sorry. “I touch him a little, really, that’s all,” Salei said, putting his hands up to imitate the tap he thought he had given Modano. “I just try to catch him before he go across the goal mouth but he was already off-balance a little I think.

“I wish I knew how he was,” Salei continued. The Ducks had received no word of Modano’s condition. Salei had watched the replay. “That scares me,” Salei said. “I wish I could tell him I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt him. Without the result, I don’t think there would have been a penalty.”

Salei started the 1998-99 season with a five-game suspension for the way he knocked Phoenix’s Daniel Briere off his feet in the final preseason game and Dallas Coach Ken Hitchcock said that Salei was either “stupid” or had “bought himself a war,” but Salei seemed truly sorry for the result of his push and truly shocked at what had happened to Modano. And if Hitchcock watches the replay, he may want to recheck his emotional response.

He should also have stopped in the Ducks’ locker room.

Teemu Selanne sat in a chair with his head down. He was the third Anaheim player to say he had been scared.

“The game, it is so dangerous,” Selanne said. The NHL’s leading goal-scorer a year ago, Selanne seemed tentative after Modano’s crash. “I wish I could find out how bad he is hurt. I pray it’s not bad. All the players are so big and so fast now.

“We all have to take more responsibilities for how we are on the ice, especially when you are behind somebody. All of us, we have to think. I never saw somebody hit his head so hard. These things, they scare me, they do. You always want to play hard and go all out in this league, but still . . . “

Selanne stopped talking for a moment then looked up and said, “Yes, I thought of Paul. I hope Mike is OK. I do.”

So while the Stars were vowing war, the Ducks were hoping for Modano’s health as they had hoped for Kariya’s health not so long ago.

The two teams play again Friday at the Pond. Salei didn’t want to answer Hitchcock’s threats and won’t even begin to guess whether he will be suspended again. Salei shouldn’t be. His game misconduct for the shove wasn’t deserved. Salei was correct. He was punished for a bad result of a hit in a game where men expect to be hit. If the Stars are angry, the Ducks need to move ahead.

The silence ended as soon as Modano was carried off the ice. Boos took its place. For a night the Ducks had become bullies. But not on purpose.

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