Ducks Have Box Seats for 3-2 Loss to Detroit

The first one took 24 seconds. The second one took 23.

That’s how long it took the Detroit Red Wings to deliver two body blows to the Mighty Ducks’ woeful penalty-killing unit, and the Ducks ultimately couldn’t recover in a 3-2 loss Friday night at Joe Louis Arena.

The Red Wings would score all three goals on the power play, but the first two came on consecutive penalties in the first period, putting the Ducks in a two-goal hole they couldn’t dig out of as they headed home without a point on their three-game trip.

“I really don’t know what to say at this point,” captain Scott Niedermayer said. “Another three power-play goals against, two of them right away like that. I don’t have an answer right now. It’s unbelievable.”

The Ducks (2-4-0-1) haven’t allowed more than four goals in a game, but of the 23 they’ve allowed, 14 have come when the other team had the man advantage. Against Detroit, they gave up three in eight chances, and at 73.6% they sit above only the Calgary Flames in penalty-killing percentage.

If only they could play five on five all the time.

“This league is too good to always be behind and be in the penalty box,” forward Petr Sykora said. “The bottom line is we’ve got to stay out of the penalty box and play five-on-five hockey because we’ve been successful at that.”

The first two Duck penalties resulted in goals by Pavel Datsyuk and Robert Lang. Judging by their difficulty in killing penalties, their worst fears were realized later in the first period when Teemu Selanne went off with a double minor for inadvertently clipping Detroit’s Dan Cleary with his stick.

Instead, they would clear the four-minute penalty and used the momentum to get back in the game. Selanne put in his fourth goal of the season at 17:29 of the first off a nice backhanded pass from Niedermayer, who weaved around a falling Red Wing defender.

It was Niedermayer’s second point and first since scoring a goal on opening night at Chicago. The Ducks responded with a strong second period, but that momentum was lost early in the third when Mikael Samuelsson set up in the slot and punched in Jason Woolley’s feed past goalie Ilya Bryzgalov for a 3-1 lead.

Bryzgalov made 36 saves in his first start in place of Jean-Sebastien Giguere, who sat out with a groin injury. “I tried to do my best,” the rookie said. “I tried to keep the team in the game.”

Rookie Ryan Getzlaf scored his first NHL goal at 7:58, but all it would mean was another win for the Red Wings, off to a 7-1 start under Coach Mike Babcock, who resigned as Duck coach in June to take a better offer in Detroit.

Babcock’s successor, Randy Carlyle, said he saw significant improvement from his struggling team but also took issue with the referees. The Ducks (2-4-0-1) had no power plays until midway through the second period, and had only four in the game.

“Other teams are enjoying more power plays than we are and I don’t understand how they can call the number of power plays against us for simple infractions tonight,” Carlyle said. “It’s beyond my belief that we’re as bad as taking [eight] penalties.

“I guess the Detroit Red Wings get those calls in their building.”

Said Niedermayer: “You could argue [the calls were] a little one-sided too. But we’ve got to get the job done better than that. We’ve just got to believe in ourselves right now.”