Ducks Seeking Disaster Relief

The Mighty Ducks embarrassed themselves Friday.

The time for kind words has long since passed. There’s simply no better way to describe the Ducks’ shoddy play late in a 4-4 tie against the Carolina Hurricanes.

The Ducks gave the game away.

They have been up and down this season, puzzling and frustrating their fans with their inconsistent play. But perhaps their true nature was revealed in the third period against Carolina.

Despite their talk this season about making strides, they showed again Friday why they aren’t consistent winners.

“It’s a sad deal,” Duck Coach Craig Hartsburg said. “This could be a good hockey team if the guys give us character and hard work every night. If not, it’s going to be a struggle.”

After 41 games, the midway point of the season, it’s officially a struggle.

The Ducks played superbly for about two periods, looking nothing like a team that had lost four in a row and five of six. They badgered and angered the Hurricanes in building a 4-0 lead.

Even their woebegone power play clicked.

But the Ducks fell apart in stunning fashion in the third period and were lucky to hang on for a tie. Ahead 4-1 to start the third, the Ducks suddenly lost it. Everything seemed to go haywire at once.

“It’s ridiculous what happened here tonight,” Hartsburg said.

No, what’s ridiculous is that this keeps happening.

The Ducks skate, check and play with passion, brains and brawn, tricking everyone into thinking they are a strong team capable of great things.

Then they ditch their game plan, frustrate their coach and lose all the momentum they worked so hard to gain.

Letting a four-goal lead slip away in a little more than a period is no different than posting a four-game winning streak, then going into a 1-5-1 slide.

“I guess it’s mental,” captain Paul Kariya said. “We get away from our game. I don’t know. It’s kind of like we don’t know what we have to do to play well.”

The Ducks’ 18-18-5-1 record at the season’s midway point should not surprise anyone who has watched this team perform its playoff dance in the first 41 games.

One step forward, one step back simply isn’t going to cut it this season. A .500 record might not be good enough to get the Ducks into the playoffs.

“We gave away a point tonight,” Hartsburg said. “Sooner or later, it’s going to catch up to us. That’s a point given away. You could see we started to slide at the end of the second period. Some guys shut it down. The third period was a disaster.”

After Andrei Kovalenko scored to cut Carolina’s deficit to 4-1 late in the second period, Jeff O’Neill scored twice in the first 9:18 of the third period.

Carolina’s Glen Wesley then fired the tying goal off goalie Dominic Roussel’s neck and mask into the net at 12:33. By period’s end, the Ducks had been outshot, 15-4.

O’Neill had the best scoring chance in overtime, but Roussel smothered his point-blank try midway through the five-minute period.

In the end, Roussel was the only Duck to escape Hartsburg’s postgame wrath.

“Thank God for Dom,” Hartsburg said. “I feel bad for Dom. He was left alone out there by everybody--forwards and defensemen. He deserved a lot better than he got from his teammates.”

Teemu Selanne, Marty McInnis (short-handed), Jim McKenzie and Jeff Nielsen (power play) gave Roussel a 4-0 lead midway through the second period.

But the Ducks put their game on cruise control and promptly went off the road and into the woods. Only Roussel could rescue them from their fifth consecutive loss.

“If you can’t work hard, you don’t belong in this league,” Hartsburg said. “I don’t care how skilled you are. . . . We’re at the halfway point and we’re .500. I don’t know if that’s where we should be or not.

“You get what you deserve in this league. I guess we’re probably right where we should be. We have to have a better commitment from our players if we want to be a team that’s over .500 in the second half.”