High-Flying Ducks Are Brought Down to Earth

The elixir of a rare victory in Montreal two nights before was too intoxicating for the Mighty Ducks.

Perhaps still reveling in their dominating victory over the Canadiens, the Ducks were sluggish and sloppy in a 3-2 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs that brought an unsatisfying conclusion to their trip Monday night in Air Canada Centre.

They Ducks wasted an opportunity to return home with a winning trip in cities in which they have long had little success. They lost for the fourth consecutive time in Toronto and goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere wondered if they made too much of their first win in Montreal in seven years.

“There was a lot of emotion for some reason,” Giguere said. “Guys were really happy to win there and we showed up flat for some reason. Maybe it had something to do with it, I don’t know, but it’s unacceptable. We’re better than that.”

The loss came against a team that had lost three consecutive home games, all to Western Conference teams, and that was playing without forward Eric Lindros and goalie Ed Belfour.

Lindros may be out four to six weeks because of a tear in his right wrist and Belfour pulled himself out of the lineup because of a groin strain.

But Toronto outworked the Ducks at the start, holding them without a shot for the first seven minutes and building a 13-4 shot advantage after one period.

It also wasn’t a good night for the Duck defensive corps. Keith Carney committed a costly turnover when Kyle Wellwood intercepted his pass from behind the net and beat Giguere with a quick wrist shot.

“[Keith’s] been here for four or five years now,” Giguere said. “He’s always been one of our best defensemen. Everybody’s human and you make mistakes. You’ll fall or do something [else]. God knows I’ve done it many times.”

Rob Niedermayer forged a 1-1 tie with his second goal in consecutive games, but the Ducks did themselves in with a constant line to the penalty box in the second period. With Carney serving two minutes for hooking, Vitaly Vishnevski was called for boarding on Alex Steen.

With a five-on-three power play, Tomas Kaberle scored 13 seconds later to give the Maple Leafs (16-12-3) the lead for good. Steen added to it with another power-play goal on a rebound into an open net as Giguere got stuck behind a Jason Allison screen.

“That seems to be what happens,” defenseman Scott Niedermayer said. “If we’re not at our best, we’re in the box pretty quickly after that. They took advantage of that.”

The loss illustrated the Ducks’ inconsistency. As bad as they were for a while, the Ducks (13-13-5) also had their moments.

Teemu Selanne closed the gap with a tap-in goal past Mikael Tellqvist for a team-leading 16th of the season off a wraparound feed from Andy McDonald moments after Toronto’s Aki Berg left the penalty box.

The Ducks kept the pressure on until the final horn by outshooting Toronto, 25-14, over the last two periods. But they couldn’t convert on two power-play chances late in the third period and failed in all eight opportunities.

After drawing a hooking penalty on Kaberle, Todd Marchant managed to get off a shot from a steep angle on the left side that went wide of the net as the Ducks pulled Giguere to get a six-on-four advantage.

“I just had to get it on the net or at least get it to the back post where [Joffrey] Lupul was going and it went just a little wide,” Marchant said.

Perhaps with five more minutes of playing time or had they simply gotten off to a better start, the Ducks might have made a decent trip a great one.

“We were very tentative in the early going and they really dominated us,” Coach Randy Carlyle said. “And then we found ways to continually take penalties and take ourselves out of the hockey game.

“Did we battle? Yeah, we seemed to get more going for ourselves in the third period. But that’s not enough. You’ve got to play 60 minutes. You can’t get away with playing 20 minutes.”

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The Maple Leafs replaced the injured Belfour by calling up Jean-Sebastien Aubin from their minor league team, also based in Toronto....Duck defenseman Jason Marshall was a healthy scratch for the seventh consecutive game.