Ducks are routed, 7-4

The sweet smell of success the Ducks have soaked up for the first month of the season suddenly turned odorous.

A bad bounce here, a soft goal there and a couple of defensive breakdowns thrown in for good measure resulted in a 7-4 loss to the woeful Philadelphia Flyers at the Honda Center on Wednesday night.

It turned out to be a mismatch, though not one that the announced crowd of 15,379 could have anticipated. These were two polar opposites intersecting with the Ducks and their Western Conference-best 13-1-4 record against the Flyers, the NHL’s worst team.

In addition, Philadelphia started goaltender Robert Esche, he of the 1-3-0 record and 5.32 goals-against average. The Ducks turned it into a game they’d like to forget.

“It was just one of those games,” goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere said. “The floodgates started to open and I couldn’t stop it.”

The game was off from the outset. Sami Kapanen sent in a seemingly harmless shot from the point that deflected off the skate of Ducks defenseman Francois Beauchemin and took a weird bounce over the glove of Giguere.

Chris Kunitz scored his team-leading ninth goal and forged a tie. The Flyers answered in rapid-fire fashion that left Giguere and the Ducks dazed and confused.

Geoff Sanderson started the outburst with an easy rebound on their third crack at Giguere. Peter Forsberg turned Olympic goal-medal winning Swedish teammate Samuel Pahlsson around twice and somehow flipped a shot over the goaltender’s shoulder.

Mike Knuble and Simon Gagne fired in power-play goals only 1:04 apart in the first, putting the Flyers up, 5-1, and sending Giguere to the bench. The Ducks had not given up seven goals in a game since Nov. 28, 2002 against Vancouver.

“We didn’t have very much going for ourselves tonight right from the first goal,” Ducks Coach Randy Carlyle said. “They shoot the puck from the sidewall, it hits our defenseman and goes in the net. That was the precursor for what was going to happen the rest of the night.”

Said forward Teemu Selanne: “It was ugly tonight, but we’ll learn something from this.”

eric.stephens@latimes.com