Red Wings Make Ducks Work for This Victory

The defending Stanley Cup champions said they wouldn’t give up. The Detroit Red Wings promised they would put everything on the line.

They delivered Wednesday night.

And it didn’t matter.

In what may have been his last game with the Red Wings, Sergei Fedorov gave them new life, a chance to prevent a first-round playoff series sweep by the Mighty Ducks, an outcome that seemed all but unfathomable only a week ago.

But his tying goal with 2:15 left in the third period only delayed the inevitable, the Ducks completing the sweep in overtime when Steve Rucchin scored at 6:53 to give them a 4-3 Game 4 victory in front of 17,174 at Arrowhead Pond.

“I thought maybe that would have got things going,” Fedorov said of his goal, scored on a shot from an impossible angle that caromed off defenseman Niclas Havelid and passed goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere.

“To get a bounce like that was what we were hoping for, but that wasn’t the case.”

Rucchin’s goal sent the Red Wings, champions no more, to an improbable early summer vacation. They could look a lot different next season, especially if Fedorov, an unrestricted free agent, signs with another team.

On Wednesday, nobody had to remind the Red Wings they faced long odds.

Only two teams had rallied from three games down to win an NHL playoff series, the Toronto Maple Leafs overcoming the Red Wings in the Stanley Cup finals in 1942 and the New York Islanders rallying to eliminate the Pittsburgh Penguins in a second-round series in 1975.

On the plus side, the defending champion had been swept in the first round only once -- in 1952, the Red Wings toppling the Maple Leafs.

“I have to admit I’ve been down before, 3-0 and 3-1, and usually you have the feeling it’s going to be a tough battle, you feel you’ve been outplayed,” Luc Robitaille, who spent much of his career with the Kings, said before the game.

“But if there’s one group that personally I believe in, it’s this group. I know we can do it. But it’s going to be a long, hard battle.”

If doubt had crept into the room, the Red Wings hid it well.

“We’ve got an awful lot of experience in here, guys who’ve been in all kinds of different situations,” said defenseman Mathieu Schneider, another former King who joined the Red Wings only last month. “So if there’s a group of guys I want to be going through this with, it’s the one in this room.”

Of course, they were the only ones in a position to have to try. And they knew that Giguere, who stopped 32 shots in Game 4, had put them there.

“When you stop 133 of 137 shots [through the first three games], I don’t think anybody expected that,” Darren McCarty said before Wedneday night’s game. “But that’s what the playoffs are all about. The history of the NHL playoffs is young guys, rookie guys coming in and doing this. I remember as a kid watching Patrick Roy do it when he was in Montreal. We’ve got to make it stop.

“We think if we can get a couple on him, maybe early, we’ll be able to break him.”

Easier said than done.

The Red Wings capitalized on an early giveaway by Peter Sykora, rookie Henrik Zetterberg scoring at 13:23 of the first period, but a mental lapse by Mathieu Dandenault helped Paul Kariya tie the score less than two minutes later.

After Jason Krog put the Ducks ahead with a blast from the right faceoff circle at 4:35 of the third period, the Red Wings were in an all too familiar spot.

Down by a goal. Fedorov gave them life.

Rucchin took it away.