Ducks collapse at finish

Banged up and bruised after a rough holiday trip, the Ducks thought they had found a soothing tonic Friday night in the Columbus Blue Jackets.

They were met only with more pain, dealt out in unimaginable fashion.

Manny Malhotra’s goal with 1:20 left capped a four-goal Columbus rally from the midpoint of the third period that delivered a stunning 4-3 victory over the shellshocked Ducks at the Honda Center.

The Ducks led, 3-0, on the strength of goals from Andy McDonald, Travis Moen and Teemu Selanne, and goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov was working on a shutout. Columbus had lost its last five road games and was well on its way to No. 6 as an announced sellout crowd of 17,405 began to file out.

What commenced was the most distressing 10 minutes of the season.

“Hard to watch?” Ducks Coach Randy Carlyle said, repeating a question. “Yeah, it was hard to watch. Not just for me. For everybody.”

Rostislav Klesla scored at 9:58 of the third to start the comeback. Klesla found the net again at 16:46 to start a three-goal blitz that took less than two minutes.

Fredrik Modin drilled in a one-timer before Malhotra provided the game-winner when he banged in a rebound past Bryzgalov as the Ducks suffered their first regulation defeat when leading after two periods.

The whole sequence took only eight shots. After the team was taken to the woodshed by Carlyle, Selanne let loose with his own verbal tirade.

“You lead 3-0 in our building in the third, there’s no way we should lose the game,” said Selanne, who also missed a penalty shot with 21 seconds left. “But you know what? We deserved this. This is embarrassing and that’s the only word I can use to describe this whole thing.

“The last 10 minutes, we played like Pee Wees out there. If you make those mistakes and play like that, you don’t deserve to be in this league. That’s the bottom line. Unbelievable.”

Bryzgalov, who was trying to win his first game since Nov. 3, had been sharp for 50 minutes in his second start since missing 12 games because of a groin injury. He didn’t escape the criticism.

“We’re a team,” Carlyle said. “We accept responsibility for our actions. A goaltender is a member of our team. He should have made some stops, we should have had better defensive zone coverage, we should have won a faceoff. Should’ve, should’ve, should’ve. But we didn’t. We’ll have time to correct this and we’ll move on.”

The Ducks thought they had done away with a season-long three-game losing streak.

After a largely humdrum first period, McDonald broke the stalemate when he whirled at the right faceoff dot and whipped a shot past Columbus goaltender Fredrik Norrena for only his second goal in the last 11 games.

Moen made it 2-0 in the second with his career-best fifth goal and Selanne seemingly put the game out of reach with his team-high 24th early in the third.

“We had a situation you’d obviously like to have in the third,” said Scott Niedermayer, who had two assists. “To allow them to get back and win it like that, it’s quite upsetting for sure.”

Now they’re dealing with a loss that Carlyle called “unacceptable.”

“We stopped skating,” Selanne said. “We stopped working. We thought it was going to be an easy game. Boom. Over. At this level, you can’t do it.”

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eric.stephens@latimes.com