Without a Top Line, Ducks No Match for Red-Hot Blues

The No Luck Club took another beating Saturday night at the Savvis Center. In the end, a 5-2 loss to the St. Louis Blues before an announced crowd of 19,736 was the least of the Mighty Ducks’ problems.

Already without left wing Paul Kariya and center Steve Rucchin, the Ducks were forced to face the scalding Blues without right wing Teemu Selanne.

Kariya has a broken right foot and could be sidelined for another three weeks. Rucchin continues to battle dizziness stemming from a broken nose and cheekbone and is out indefinitely. Selanne needed to skate for only three minutes of Saturday’s pregame warmup to determine that his nagging groin injury had grown worse.

This was a hat trick the Ducks could have done without. It was the first time they had played a game without Kariya, Rucchin and Selanne in the lineup since the end of the 1997-98 season.

“It’s hard to be patient when you want to help the team so much,” Selanne said. “Sometimes you have to play with some pain, a bruise or whatever. You don’t want to mess around with these kinds of things.”

Selanne admitted he’s been skating at no better than 70% of top speed since he was injured in a 1-0 loss Dec. 10 to the Dallas Stars. He was sidelined for two games and was ineffective in three games after returning to the lineup. He failed to record a shot in a 2-1 overtime loss Friday against the Detroit Red Wings.

“When I just try to push off, I feel it,” said Selanne, who also has been battling an unspecified lower back injury for the last two seasons. “I’m fine walking or when I’m skating in circles. When I push off [to generate speed], it hurts. It feels like a guy is sticking a knife in my leg.”

The Ducks at full strength didn’t figure to have much of a chance against the Blues, who are 23-4-4-0 for 50 points. The Ducks had zero hope of defeating the Blues without their top line on the ice.

Fact is nobody has beaten the Blues since the Vancouver Canucks knocked them off, 4-3, Nov. 21. St. Louis’ 10-0-1 unbeaten streak is the longest current streak in the NHL.

Playing without the Kariya-Rucchin-Selanne line one night after an overtime loss to the Red Wings could have resulted in a farce against the Blues. Things seemed headed in that direction after St. Louis built a 4-0 lead early in the second period on goals by Michal Handzus and Jochen Hecht, who had two apiece.

St. Louis defenseman Al MacInnis assisted on the Blues’ first three goals. Hecht’s second goal, at 7:32 of the second period, was a gift. He was credited with the goal after teammate Scott Young’s centering pass struck Duck defenseman Vitaly Vishnevski’s stick and ricocheted past Guy Hebert for a 4-0 St. Louis lead.

Some persistent work at both ends of the ice brought the Ducks to within two goals of the Blues late in the final period. Ladislav Kohn dived to swat home a rebound off a Samuel Pahlsson slap shot at 15:52 of the second period and Matt Cullen slammed a power-play goal past Roman Turek at 17:36 of the third.

Handzus’ third goal of the game only nine seconds after Cullen scored returned the game to the rout category. It was Handzus’ ninth goal this season and completed his first NHL three-goal game.

At game’s end, the Ducks refused to pin the defeat on the absence of their top line. The Ducks’ inability to stay out of the penalty box in the first two periods certainly played a bigger role in their third consecutive loss.

St. Louis’ first three goals were on power plays.

“We didn’t have opportunities to build any momentum,” Duck Coach Guy Charron said of trying to kill off four short-handed situations in the game’s first 23 minutes. “Not many teams can play catch-up hockey against the Blues. If we could have played five-on-five hockey all night, we might have salvaged something here tonight.

“We didn’t want our team to dwell on having key players out. Our team has to work through this.”

Defenseman Oleg Tverdovsky put it this way: “We have another 20 guys who are NHL players. We have to find a way to get the job done. That’s the bottom line.”