Ducks Lose Again, Grasp for Positives

Technically, this was a step forward.

The Mighty Ducks got their first point of the season Sunday. They scored three goals in one game. Almost all of the big boys chipped in. Steve Rucchin scored, twice. Vaclav Prospal scored. Sergei Fedorov had two assists.

What that all meant was clear by the long faces in a mostly empty Duck dressing room afterward.

The Ducks let a two-goal lead slip away in a 4-3 overtime loss to the Boston Bruins in front of an announced 13,120 at the Arrowhead Pond. The Ducks handed over pucks like IOUs, with their last turnover resulting in Sergei Samsonov’s game-winner with 52 seconds left in overtime that left the Ducks winless through the first five games.

So a point in the standings seemed pretty much pointless in the postgame postmortem.

“This one is inexcusable,” Duck Coach Mike Babcock said. “I don’t care if they beat you. When you beat yourself, that is totally unacceptable.”

There was some good, some bad and a bunch of ugly throughout for the Ducks.

Prospal scored his first goal as a Duck. He also committed the last and, as it turned out, worst turnover. Goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere had just made a brilliant save to bail the Ducks out after one turnover. Prospal immediately handed the puck back to the Bruins.

Jeff Jillson then fed a wide-open Samsonov, who went alone to the net and chipped in the game-winner over Giguere’s shoulder.

“It was the wrong play at the wrong time,” Prospal said.

That almost seemed the game plan.

Rucchin had the 16th two-goal game of his career. He also fell for a schoolyard-type play that led to the game-tying goal. With the Ducks killing a Niclas Havelid penalty, Rucchin, usually dependable, took the puck into the Bruin zone, then made a drop pass with three players around him -- all Bruins.

“We’re going into their zone and fall for the old ‘hey’ play?” Babcock said.

The result was a Bruin breakout that ended in Mike Knuble’s second goal of the game, tying the score, 3-3, 15:35 into the third period.

“That was a pretty embarrassing situation,” Rucchin said. “Definitely the puck was being called for from behind me.... Obviously, I wasn’t expecting it to be a guy in a white jersey calling for the puck.”

The Prospal and Rucchin gaffes were merely the most glaring in a charitable game by the Ducks.

Defensemen Ruslan Salei and Todd Simpson allowed Knuble to slip behind them for a breakaway goal midway through the second period. Defenseman Kurt Sauer handed the puck over, leading to a Brian Rolston goal just two minutes after Rucchin had broken a scoreless tie.

“Tell me how the mental part is?” Babcock said. “The mental part that allows you to do your job? Not very good, obviously.”

Which left the Ducks in an even deeper hole.

“We definitely need to start playing,” Giguere said. “I don’t mean we need five good games in a row. We need one game. We need one win.”

The Ducks seemed to be on that path after scoring three goals in 6:34, or one more than they did in three previous games. Rucchin’s first goal, two minutes into the second period, gave the Ducks their first lead this season and ended a 161:18 scoreless streak. His second gave the Ducks a 3-1 lead 8:34 into the second period.

“The positive for us today?” Babcock said. “We haven’t scored a goal forever. We scored three. Prospal gets a goal, which is a positive thing. Fedorov got a couple points is a positive thing. Right here, if I’m telling you that we’ve played three games at home and haven’t won? That’s not a positive, let’s be honest.”