Ducks opt to play the percentages

Ducks Coach Randy Carlyle doesn’t like to spend much time in his team’s locker room, firmly believing that it belongs to the players and should be regulated by the guys who skate and shoot, not by the coaches.

But with the Ducks facing a two-goal deficit and an unfavorable tilt in the balance of their second-round playoff series against the Vancouver Canucks, Carlyle entered the visitors’ room at GM Place after the second period Tuesday and made a simple request.

“I said, ‘Can we be 10 to 15% better? If we can all be 10 to 15% better in the third period, we can hang in there,’ ” Carlyle said.

“That’s why it’s important to have 20 guys pulling in the same direction. It’s not one guy doing it.”

All 20 stood together, superstars, journeymen and the third- and fourth-line players, the ones who must make the most of limited minutes and seized their chances Tuesday.

With standout defensemen Chris Pronger and Scott Niedermayer emerging from their tandem slumber to once again become leaders, and with a dash of grit and spirit from grinders Travis Moen and Brad May acting as a galvanizing force, the Ducks pulled out a 3-2 overtime victory on Moen’s rebound goal 2 minutes 7 seconds into sudden-death play. The triumph, so deflating to the Canucks, sent the sellout crowd of 18,630 into a stunned silence and gave the Ducks a commanding 3-1 series lead.

“I give this comeback to the foot soldiers,” Carlyle said.

The Ducks can advance to the Western Conference final for the second successive season if they defeat the Canucks on Thursday at Anaheim. That seemed a remote possibility, at best, after 40 minutes of play on Tuesday, with the Canucks holding a 2-0 lead and the Ducks getting little help from Pronger or Niedermayer, who Tuesday learned that they were two of the three finalists for the Norris Trophy as the NHL’s top defenseman.

Teemu Selanne, a 48-goal scorer this season, was also showing few signs of the marksmanship and energy he usually displays. But like the two towering defensemen, Selanne -- who was cut in the mouth in the second period and had been gashed above and below his right eye in previous games -- responded when the Ducks needed him most.

Pronger scored the Ducks’ first goal, at 3:58 of the third period, thanks to setups by Samuel Pahlsson and Brad May, with a blast from the blue line that skidded through a crowd in front of the net and past goaltender Roberto Luongo. Selanne tied it with 5:42 left in the period, set up by Pronger and winger Chris Kunitz, a lone voice from the Ducks’ first line.

“The first two periods, obviously we weren’t happy with how we played,” said Niedermayer, who was turned inside out by Vancouver’s Brendan Morrison on the Canucks’ second goal Tuesday.

“We approached the third period as a situation where we had nothing to lose. We just went after it and probably worked a little harder than we had been.”

Say, 10 to 15% harder. It came at the urging not only of Carlyle, but of many players in the locker room, though Niedermayer wouldn’t identify them.

“It was no secret that we weren’t executing and we weren’t playing the way we were capable of,” said Niedermayer, whose own struggles through the first three games had led many Canadian reporters to suspect that the normally impeccable defenseman had been rendered ineffective by a nagging injury.

“We turned it up. We were fortunate, because you can’t always turn it on like that.”

They turned it on despite a fine effort by Luongo, who on Tuesday was selected a finalist for three major awards: the Hart Trophy as the most valuable player, the Vezina as the league’s top goalie and the Lester Pearson Award, given by players to the player they judge the most outstanding during the regular season.

Luongo, cheered by chants of “MVP!” from the crowd, stopped 27 shots. He had no chance on the decisive goal. Niedermayer created the chance with a long shot that was blocked before it reached the net; Moen, standing on the inside edge of the right faceoff circle, swatted it past a cluster of players for his third postseason goal.

Pahlsson also earned an assist on Moen’s goal, a rich reward for a player whose longtime defensive diligence made him one of three finalists announced Tuesday for the Selke Trophy, given to the league’s top defensive forward.

“This game was won by May and Moen and Robbie Niedermayer, the guys who grind,” Carlyle said. “When you have people like Brad May who can come off the bench, it builds the ability of our group to have confidence.”

About 10 to 15% more confidence, maybe. And that was more than enough for the Ducks on Tuesday.

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