Pronger takes another swing at Ducks’ chances

If they don’t learn their lesson now, if the Ducks don’t take to heart their admission that they take too many needless penalties, they will look back in anger in a week or two from now as the Senators hoist the Stanley Cup.

It may already be perilously late for the Ducks in one sense, even though the Senators’ rally for a 5-3 victory Saturday at Scotiabank Place merely halved the Ducks’ series lead to two games to one.

It may be too late because Chris Pronger again blurred the line between aggression and stupidity when he dealt a vicious elbow to the head of Ottawa forward Dean McAmmond two minutes and three seconds into the third period, creating the possibility that he will be suspended for Game 4 on Monday.

Pronger wasn’t penalized on the play, which briefly knocked McAmmond out and turned his legs into noodles as he was helped off the ice. McAmmond didn’t return, but Senators Coach Bryan Murray said his player had come around after getting treated in the locker room.

“I was just stepping up to finish my check,” Pronger said. “I don’t know what happened after that.”

At least he didn’t try to blame physics, as he did after he struck Detroit forward Tomas Holmstrom in the head during Game 3 of the Western Conference finals.

The NHL takes a dim view on hits to the head, as evidenced by its decision to suspend Pronger for a game after the hit on Holmstrom. Pronger had tried to explain it as the inevitable consequence of a 6-foot-6 player hitting a 6-foot-1 opponent, but the league didn’t buy it.

Asked if he was concerned about facing disciplinary action again, Pronger became tight-lipped. “I don’t know,” he said.

Murray said the hit “is not what needs to happen,” adding, “I can’t for the life of me understand how it was missed by four officials.” But any hit can be reviewed after the game, and this one surely won’t go unpunished.

The Stanley Cup finals are the NHL’s showcase event and this was the first game televised on NBC, widening the potential audience beyond the three dozen people who get Versus. For a player to strike an opponent in the head and drop him helplessly to the ice couldn’t have played well on national TV for a league that is still considered barbaric in some circles for allowing fighting.

The hit didn’t go over well in Canada, either. Kelly Hrudey, the former Kings goaltender who is a prominent figure on “Hockey Night in Canada” telecasts, emphatically said Pronger should not be in the lineup on Monday.

“There’s no question in my mind that he has to be suspended for that,” Hrudey said. “That clearly is an attempt to injure.”

In the end, it may hurt the Ducks more than it hurt McAmmond.

The Ducks survived Pronger’s absence in Game 4 of their series against Detroit. They piled even more minutes on Francois Beauchemin and Scott Niedermayer and won, launching a five-game winning streak that ended only on Saturday.

The Ducks cannot assume that they will be as lucky this time, against a better, faster opponent that got scoring from a variety of sources on Saturday and at times cycled the puck better than the Ducks have seen anyone do this spring.

For one, the Ducks’ defense is more fragile now than it was then.

Kent Huskins struggled Saturday and botched two chances to clear the puck on the play that led to Ottawa’s fifth goal, which put the game well beyond the Ducks’ flailing grasp. Ric Jackman was deemed trustworthy enough to play only 3:47, and Joe DiPenta, earnest but slow, hasn’t played since the fifth game against Detroit.

Sean O’Donnell played 20:01 but he took a cross-checking penalty late in the second period that was the second in a streak of four straight manpower disadvantages for the Ducks.

“We took too many penalties, there’s no doubt about that,” Ducks center Samuel Pahlsson said.

“We’re down by one or two goals and we keep taking penalties so we can’t put any pressure on them to come back in the game. We have to stay on the ice.”

They’ve said that before and haven’t done it. They will not get away with it again, not if the Senators are as physical and plucky as they were on Saturday.

“We can’t do it every game. We can do it once in a while, I think, but we played a really good team,” Pahlsson said.

Todd Marchant said the Ducks “got a little undisciplined” in the third period, falling into the trap of taking penalties when they stopped moving their feet.

“We just didn’t play our game for whatever reason,” Marchant said.

“We weren’t able to get physical. We weren’t able to get in on the forecheck. We took too many penalties. They controlled the pace of the game.”

It’s time for the Ducks to control their worst impulses. If this loss doesn’t sting, if it doesn’t reverberate today and continue to bother them until the puck drops at Scotiabank Place on Monday, their chance at the Cup will be lost.

Helene Elliott can be reached at helene.elliott@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Elliott, go to latimes.com/elliott.