Ducks Flying South Again

The Dallas Stars put the Mighty Ducks back in their place--14th place in the Western Conference--and hammered home a valuable lesson in the process.

The Ducks tried to take comfort that Sunday’s 5-1 loss at the Arrowhead Pond was not a lopsided affair. Yet they were left with an uncomfortable feeling.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t know if that was an indication of how good they are,” Duck assistant captain Oleg Tverdovsky said.

“It was probably an indication of how bad we played tonight.”

Two plays by the Stars’ Jere Lehtinen underscored how far removed the Ducks are from their six-game winning streak, which reached a climax Wednesday with a 5-4 come-from-behind victory against Philadelphia.

Lehtinen had an open net to shoot at late in the first period. He lost control of the puck, only to have it deflect off goalie Steve Shields’ skate back to Lehtinen.

Goal, 1-0.

Early in the second period, Lehtinen was in the Dallas zone when Anaheim defenseman Keith Carney lost control of the puck. Lehtinen picked up the puck and passed it to Brenden Morrow, who started a two-on-one rush.

Goal, 3-0.

Boos from the announced crowd of 14,617 followed.

The Ducks, who had their winning streak snapped Friday by Carolina, had another broken Sunday. They had a string of 36 games where they were either leading, tied or within a goal in the third period come to an end.

“It seems like we have tendency to have streaks, bad ones and good ones,” Tverdovsky said. “It probably started with Philadelphia, where we gave up a lot of goals.

“We have to tighten our defense. We can’t score five goals every night. We can’t open up and play like we want to score five goals.”

Dallas’ Mike Modano had a goal and four assists. Morrow had a goal and three assists. Lehtinen had a goal and two assists. All capitalized on opportunities the Ducks weren’t giving up a week ago.

Anaheim has given up 12 goals in its last three games.

“With a younger team, guys here don’t forget, but they don’t realize what gave us success,” captain Paul Kariya said. “When we were scoring goals, we weren’t going out there necessarily trying to score goals.

“We played well positionally and scored. The last couple games we tried to make plays that weren’t there.”

The Stars could relate to such a performance.

They felt like they gave a game to the Ducks on Jan. 25, the day Ken Hitchcock was fired and General Manager Bob Gainey stepped aside. That evening, Ed Belfour gave up five goals in 22 shots before being pulled.

But Belfour kept the Stars from falling behind early Sunday. He stopped 11 shots in the first period, with several quality saves to keep the game scoreless.

Belfour stopped 34 of 35 shots.

The Ducks had three power plays in the first period and failed to capitalize. The Stars got one late in the period, and Lehtinen, with help from a fortuitous bounce, converted.

“At the end of the first period, I thought our team had played hard and played fairly well, and we were down by a goal,” Duck Coach Bryan Murray said.

“I thought it was a much closer game than that. It should have come down to the third period somewhat even. To me, it shouldn’t have been that lopsided.”

Then again, maybe it should have been.

“I don’t know what happened tonight,” Tverdovsky said. “We played some good games in a row. We just didn’t show up tonight. We have to start from scratch right.”