Ducks Shine in a Shootout

With the most challenging schedule left among the Western Conference contenders battling for a berth in the Stanley Cup playoffs, the Mighty Ducks know they’ll have to earn their way into the postseason.

Against a season-long nemesis Friday night, the Ducks showed they are willing to go above and beyond to perform the task at hand.

The Ducks got a clutch regulation goal by Andy McDonald to force overtime, and Rob Niedermayer and Jonathan Hedstrom delivered in the shootout to give Anaheim an improbable 5-4 victory over the Dallas Stars at the Arrowhead Pond.

As the tense game reached the shootout stage, it was set up to be a mismatch.

Dallas, which leads the Pacific Division with 101 points, was 11-0 in shootouts. In contrast, the Ducks had won only two of their nine appearances.

Instead, Niedermayer and Hedstrom converted on their shots and goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere, after some shaky play in regulation, foiled Antti Miettinen and Jussi Jokinen, the latter of whom had converted nine of 11 shot attempts.

“I just didn’t want to make the first move,” said Giguere, who made 27 saves. “I did not want to be aggressive, just let them come at me and react on their move.”

Niedermayer hadn’t attempted a shot in a shootout all season, but he beat Marty Turco with a wrist shot before Hedstrom followed with another to give the Ducks two crucial points in the playoff race.

With 88 points, the Ducks (38-23-12) are in a fifth-place tie with Colorado and have a game in hand on the Avalanche. More important, they are six points ahead of ninth-place San Jose with nine games remaining.

“It was a big game and a big win tonight,” Hedstrom said. “Especially coming back the way we did. It was more like a playoff game.”

The Teemu Selanne-McDonald partnership continues to thrive. The big season for the diminutive center continued to pay dividends for the Ducks as he scored off a brilliant setup by Selanne to tie the score, 4-4, with 2:18 remaining in regulation. It was McDonald’s career-high 29th goal and his 10th in the last 14 games.

Selanne got the puck in the corner from Joffrey Lupul and spun Dallas defenseman Jon Klemm around with a series of moves before shoveling a perfect pass to McDonald, who one-timed a shot by Turco. Turco had given up only 10 goals in six previous games against the Ducks.

“I knew right away where he was,” Selanne said. “I didn’t have to spend an extra second or two to watch him. He wasn’t open a long time, so I knew it had to be hard pass. What a great shot.”

Said McDonald: “They were focused pretty hard on him tonight. It was a terrific pass.”

The tight contest had all the appearances of a playoff game as both teams held one-goal leads while forging four ties.

Two games after scoring two power-play goals in a 2-1 victory over the Ducks in Dallas, the Stars won the special teams battle again even without defenseman Sergei Zubov, their quarterback on the unit.

Zubov sat out because of a leg injury suffered Wednesday night but Stephane Robidas and Brenden Morrow each scored with the extra man. Morrow’s goal at 1:35 of the third period gave them a 4-3 lead.

The Ducks went scoreless in five power-play chances and haven’t scored in 13 over the last three games.

But they made up for the lack of success with the man advantage by working hard for goals.

Chris Kunitz, Samuel Pahlsson and Todd Fedoruk scored to offset goals by Jeremy Stevenson, Robidas and Jason Arnott as they defeated Dallas for only the second time in seven tries.