Game Ducks Are Ready for Another Challenge

The initial postmortems in the Great White North agreed that the Mighty Ducks had defeated the Calgary Flames at their own game, as if Darryl Sutter had invented a relentless, grinding style and that the Ducks had stolen that idea to win their first-round playoff series.

That theory has a bigger hole than a doughnut from Tim Hortons.

The Ducks didn’t win by copying the Flames.

Or anyone else.

“I think we played our game,” defenseman Scott Niedermayer said. “We weren’t playing anybody else’s game.”

The Ducks’ game, he said, isn’t so different from that of most successful playoff teams. But they played it so well against Calgary that they made it their own.

And they’ll have to play it every bit as well, if not better, when they face the seventh-seeded Colorado Avalanche in a second-round series that begins tonight at the Arrowhead Pond.

“We just have to play all our games like we did the last two, 60-minute games,” defenseman Francois Beauchemin said, referring to the Ducks’ Game 6 rally for a 2-1 victory and their thoroughness in Wednesday’s 3-0, series-clinching triumph at Calgary.

“Right from the start, we’ve got to get on them and keep playing that way all game. We didn’t play 60 minutes at Calgary in Game 5, and we can’t afford to be sloppy the first two periods. We’ve got to be ready.”

Their minds might be willing, but playing every other day since April 21 -- and traveling to Calgary three times -- might take a toll on their bodies. The Avalanche has been off since Sunday, when Andrew Brunette’s overtime goal finished off a five-game upset of the second-seeded Dallas Stars.

Colorado got another boost this week when standout two-way winger Steve Konowalchuk, who broke his wrist in November, returned to practice. He’s poised to join an impressive corps that’s led by Joe Sakic, Milan Hejduk and Alex Tanguay and supported by mobile defensemen Rob Blake and John-Michael Liles. Pesky Ian Laperriere brings a valuable annoyance factor, and goaltender Jose Theodore is finally playing as well as Colorado hoped when it acquired him from Montreal on March 8.

“We’ve got to step up probably a little bit in every area,” Duck defenseman Sean O’Donnell said. “Our special teams were good, but they’ll have to be better. Getting scoring from all four lines, playing in our own end, everything has to go up.”

Ascending the emotional and physical scale “will be our challenge for sure,” Niedermayer said Thursday, after players gathered for a meeting and an optional practice.

“Obviously, it’s going to take our best effort. We’ve got to come out and be totally focused and play like we did [Wednesday] night.

“We’re not going to change too much. Obviously, their team, if you look at some of the players they have, there are things that will have to be addressed. We’re just going to continue to play the way we need to play.”

To Niedermayer, who controlled the tempo for much of the decisive seventh game, the Ducks’ strategy against the Flames was no great mystery. It was a season-long effort that evolved as General Manager Brian Burke increased his team’s reserves of toughness and speed. Speed, he knew, can break open games. But he also knew that much of playoff hockey is contested along the boards and in the corners, and that if his players couldn’t win those battles, the goal scorers would be useless.

Every game of the Duck-Flame series was physically punishing, and the Ducks never backed away. The Flames faded, but the Ducks adapted, holding Jarome Iginla to one futile shot in each of the last two games after he’d scored five goals in the first five games. When goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere couldn’t meet the remarkable standards he’d set in the Ducks’ 2003 Stanley Cup run, they turned to Ilya Bryzgalov and fed off his calmness and athleticism.

“We’re a lot better team than people gave us credit for at the start of the series,” Burke said. “We thought we could win. It took some time to get guys out who we didn’t think would win for us. We’re a new-rules team.”

New-rules, in that they use their speed to befuddle defenders, but old-school in so many vital aspects.

“When we can, we get in on the forecheck and try to do that,” Niedermayer said. “We also have four lines capable of doing what we need to do. We want a good forecheck and try to create scoring chances off that, while being responsible defensively.”

Beauchemin said the Ducks bested Calgary’s superb goalie, Miikka Kiprusoff, by “getting some traffic and getting some quality shots.” They’ll try to do that against Theodore and the Avalanche, but so does every team. However, the nature of the plan matters less than its execution, and the Ducks executed to perfection in closing out the Flames.

“We have to focus on playing as well as we can as a team, and wherever that leads to, it leads to,” Niedermayer said. “Let things fall where they may after that.”

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Keys to the series

Eric Stephens’ keys for the Ducks against Colorado:

* 1. The defense of Samuel Pahlsson: The Ducks’ top checking center scored only two points in the last series but put the clamps on Jarome Iginla in Games 6 and 7.

* 2. Teemu Selanne and Andy McDonald must stay hot: The linemates combined for eight points in the final four games against Calgary.

* 3. Must rattle Jose Theodore: The Colorado goaltender is the type who can steal games if he gets hot. The Ducks must take advantage of their power-play opportunities and shake his confidence.