The Best Offense Turns Out to Be a Few Good Defensemen

One glance at the series scoring after two games of the Stanley Cup finals neatly summed up the Mighty Ducks’ woes.

New Jersey Devil goaltender Martin Brodeur had more points than Duck winger Paul Kariya, who scored 50 goals once upon a time and led the team with 81 points this season. In fact, Brodeur, with one assist, had outscored the entire Duck team.

And so it was that their defensemen, a group of steady souls but devoid of anyone likely to challenge playoff scoring records set by Bobby Orr and Paul Coffey, decided to kick-start the Duck offense Saturday.

“Somebody’s got to do it,” defenseman Ruslan Salei said, smiling.

Salei touched off a wild celebration when his hard wrist shot eluded Brodeur 6:59 into overtime, giving the Ducks a 3-2 victory and cutting the Devils’ series lead to 2-1. But the Ducks wouldn’t have reached that point without the efforts of Sandis Ozolinsh, who’s as well-known for his creativity as for his defensive gaffes yet has displayed the opposite traits since the Ducks acquired him from Florida at the All-Star break.

Ozolinsh is widely considered a high-risk defenseman because he loves to dart deep into the offensive zone, which can leave his team vulnerable to counterattacks. However, Duck Coach Mike Babcock said Ozolinsh has been diligent defensively and is more rewarding than risky.

“It’s about making decisions and doing things at the right time,” Babcock said of Ozolinsh on Sunday after a team meeting at Disney Ice. “The other thing about it is you don’t get anywhere in life in the parking lot if you’ve got one foot on the gas and one on the brake. We want to keep our foot on the long skinny one.”

Ozolinsh really hasn’t had the pedal to the metal. He has been better on defense than the Ducks might have anticipated and has done less on offense than they might have hoped; his arrival hasn’t made their power play a consistent asset.

“Actually, he’s erred the other way,” Kariya said of Ozolinsh, who was elusive enough to slip past a media mob Sunday. “He’s played a lot more conservative. We’d actually like to see him get up the ice more and make some plays.”

With the direction of the series in the balance Saturday, Ozolinsh and Salei put their games into high gear and gave the offense-starved Ducks reason to continue dreaming their Cup dreams.

Now, it’s a series, not a runaway, as the teams prepare for Game 4 tonight at the Arrowhead Pond.

“They play tight as a defense and they don’t give much room for our forwards,” Salei said of the Devils. “Somebody’s got to step up sometime. There’s more room for our defensemen to step in, so Ozie scored.”

Defensemen have scored five of the Ducks’ 36 playoff goals, compared with eight of 52 for the Devils. With 14 points, Devil defenseman Scott Niedermayer ranks third in team scoring but has outscored everyone on the Ducks in the playoffs.

Niedermayer and Brian Rafalski are skillful on offense, and veteran Scott Stevens makes a fine first pass to move the puck up ice. And he still has a solid shot from the point, reminiscent of the days he scored 21 goals for the Washington Capitals, including 16 on the power play.

“Everyone talks about these teams, that all they do is play defense,” Babcock said. “That’s so far from the truth it’s not even funny. We try to have our [defensemen] in the rush all the time. We never had them in the rush once in two games in New Jersey. We didn’t have any flow or speed in our game. We didn’t have any attack.”

Their attack was improved Saturday. Ozolinsh tied Mike Leclerc for the team lead with four shots each, Keith Carney had three, Salei two and Niclas Havelid one. They got shots to the net and hoped for the kinds of crazy bounces that did result.

“Pretty much all of our defensemen have good shots,” forward Jason Krog said. “You can make those bang-bang plays.... Their scoring has been huge for us.”

Ozolinsh created the chance for the Ducks’ first goal when he intercepted a clearing attempt by Brodeur and took a shot that deflected off Devil defenseman Tommy Albelin.

The puck caromed to Marc Chouinard, who tucked it inside the post. Ozolinsh was credited with the second goal thanks to a gaffe by Brodeur, who dropped his stick while playing Ozolinsh’s soft dump-in and watched in disbelief as the puck caromed off the stick and into the net.

Salei, known for hitting the glass more often than hitting the net, capped off the night by rifling a hard shot under Brodeur’s glove after Adam Oates cleanly won a faceoff from Pascal Rheaume and slid the puck back toward the blue line.

Salei and Ozolinsh had scored in the same game once before, in the Ducks’ series-clinching victory over Dallas on May 5, but Salei doesn’t think of himself as a scorer. “I score here and there, but I never score a lot of goals,” he said. “I’ve got a decent shot, I think.”

Thanks to him, the Ducks believe they have a better-than-decent shot to pull even tonight.

“We got the momentum back,” Salei said. “We finally got the first win under our belt, which is important.

“We’ll take it one game at a time and focus on the game [tonight], and we’ve got to take that one too.”