Can’t Mask Over This Loss

The Mighty Ducks still looked back fondly on Paul Kariya’s hat trick Monday night. They felt good about his selection to the all-star game.

But those good moments, as they always seem with the Ducks, were fleeting. They couldn’t mask their lack of offense, or get a kind deflection off a mask, Wednesday. The Buffalo Sabres’ 3-1 victory before an announced 9,845 fans at the Arrowhead Pond was a tale of two shots and another example of bad luck for the Ducks.

Buffalo’s Tim Connolly fired a shot off the mask of Duck goalie Steve Shields. The puck went in.

The Ducks’ Mike Leclerc fired a shot off the mask of Sabre goalie Martin Biron. The puck didn’t go in.

The Sabres clung to a 2-1 lead in the third period, before J.P. Dumont’s empty-net goal with 20 seconds left.

“Winning is fun, if you’re not winning, you’re not having as much fun,” Kariya said. “It’s important as a team that we start getting some wins and get ourselves back into the playoff picture. That’s when we’re all going to have a lot of fun.”

Well, there was no fun Wednesday. Kariya was coming off a hat trick in a 5-3 victory over Nashville on Monday. It was a rare offensive performance by the Ducks and Exhibit A on why Kariya belongs in the all-star game.

“I hope that does good things for him and he gets on a real good roll,” Coach Bryan Murray said before the game. “We can win some games if Paul scores like that.”

Sure, the Ducks can pretty much count on a victory every time Kariya scores three goals. It’s when he needs others to chip in that they run into trouble.

Other teams find ways to put the puck in the net. The Sabres found two in the second period.

Vaclav Varada carried the puck in from the blue line and turned defenseman Oleg Tverdovsky around. Tverdovsky got his stick on Varada’s skate at the last second, tripping him up. But as Varada was falling to the ice he managed to get a wrist shot off that beat Shields to the left for a 1-0 lead 7 minutes 45 seconds into the period.

Connolly then skated into the Duck zone, cleared defenseman Ruslan Salei and got off a shot that Shields had a good look at ... too good of a look.

The puck struck Shields in the mask and ricocheted downward into the net for a 2-0 lead at 11:27 of the period.

How things go against the Ducks was evident in the third period, when Leclerc ripped a shot at Biron, hitting him in the mask. The puck bounced back harmlessly away.

“That’s the way the game goes, sometimes you don’t get the breaks,” Leclerc said.

The Ducks did get one break in the second period and Leclerc cashed in.

With the Ducks on the power play, Samuel Pahlsson made a slick centering pass to Matt Cullen, who was bearing down on the Sabre net. Cullen couldn’t handle the pass, but he did stop the puck, leaving a perfect tee-shot for Leclerc.