Penalty Killing Is Still Special

The Mighty Ducks’ penalty killing has mirrored their season.

They haven’t always been effective when down a man, and they went through some worrisome stretches, but they’ve gotten better as the season has gone on and have been superb in the playoffs.

The Ducks have killed 31 consecutive penalties, stretching back to the second penalty in Game 5 of their first-round series against Calgary and including eight Tuesday night. They’ve killed 56 of 62 disadvantages in 10 playoff games, a 90.3% success rate that’s easily the best among playoff teams.

They made some adjustments after they gave up five power-play goals in their second and third games against Calgary, most notably to keep shifts short for the forwards to ensure they have fresh legs as much as possible.

“That’s kind of natural in the playoffs,” said assistant coach Dave Farrish, who oversees the penalty-killing unit. “You can’t afford to be caught out there too long and expose yourself to being out there too tired, especially with some of the great players they’ve got out there, so that’s one of our focuses, for sure.

“We’ve been sticking with the same system pretty well all season and we’ve been refining it as we go. We’ve made minor adjustments to it, based on the competition that we’re playing against and their type of players, but really it’s been the players. They’ve really been focused on small details of it. ...

“All of our guys have been willing to make the commitment to block shots or take hits to make the play and they do a good job of clearing pucks and obviously your goaltender has to be making saves too, and we’ve been doing a good job of that.”

Farrish was a defenseman in his NHL playing days and got a lot of penalty-killing experience, which is standing him in good stead now.

“Special teams are a big part of the game, and even more so now with the tightness of the rules,” he said. “We had a tough start to the season this year with it, but we changed our system to accommodate the rules and I think the guys have done a great job since.”

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Joffrey Lupul’s heroics in Game 3 overshadowed a poor effort by the Ducks’ top line.

Teemu Selanne, Andy McDonald and Chris Kunitz went scoreless and had a combined minus-two rating. They had nine shots between them but had the puck taken away from them more often than not.

Selanne, in particular, struggled as his giveaway at the Duck blue line eventually led to Jim Dowd’s third-period short-handed goal. He also had a possible goal snatched away by Avalanche goaltender Jose Theodore with his glove late in the second.

“That grouping has got to play better that this,” Duck Coach Randy Carlyle said. “We didn’t win many one-on-one battles there. That cannot happen as we go forward.”