All Wings, no prayer

It’s tough to say which was more reprehensible.

The so-called fans who cheered the sight of a woozy Tomas Holmstrom lying on the ice after he was slammed into the boards by Rob Niedermayer and Chris Pronger, or the Ducks’ lack of perseverance and self-control when small doses of each might have turned the Western Conference finals in their favor.

The Ducks got what they deserved Tuesday in a 5-0 loss to the Red Wings. Their legs looked heavy, their energy fizzled after their early pressure went unrewarded and their composure fractured too easily.

Teemu Selanne was invisible -- again. He and his teammates used none of the speed, size and skill that are their strongest assets.

Worst of all, they didn’t use their heads.

“We weren’t disciplined at anything,” center Ryan Getzlaf said. “We weren’t disciplined at playing our system or anything else.”

Detroit took a 2-1 series lead and regained home-ice advantage with a rout that emptied the Honda Center long before the final buzzer mercifully sounded. The Red Wings can also look forward to the possibility of Pronger being suspended by the NHL for his part in the tag-team slam of Holmstrom, even though Niedermayer paid the immediate price in the form of a five-minute boarding penalty and automatic game misconduct.

Any hit can be reviewed by the NHL regardless of whether a penalty was called. The league’s crackdown this season against hits to the head makes it likely that the Pronger-Niedermayer crunch -- which occurred when the Ducks were trailing, 4-0, in the second period -- will be re-examined and that one or both will be banished for a game or two.

The Red Wings smartly declined to say anything incendiary. Players who recall what they did on the third shift of their second day of junior hockey couldn’t remember what happened when the two Ducks sandwiched Holmstrom. They also wouldn’t say whether a suspension was warranted.

“I have to look at the video,” said Holmstrom, who had an egg-shaped bump on his right temple in addition to 13 stitches. “I think I had two guys on me. I fell into the boards and got hit again. I never see the guy come from behind.”

Defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom said he “really couldn’t see” the hit, which took place in the Ducks’ zone. All he could be sure of, he said, was that “it looked like Niedermayer came from far out in the middle of the ice with a lot of speed when he hit him.”

Nice time for the Ducks to use that speed, eh?

When Brian Burke became the Ducks’ general manager, one of his priorities was to build a physically tough team. He succeeded. But the line between toughness and adrenaline-fueled stupidity is thinner than the red line that divides the rink in two.

The Ducks can’t afford to lose Niedermayer or Pronger for even one game.

Losing their composure was bad enough. They took 11 penalties for 33 minutes and gave the Red Wings nine power plays. Holmstrom cashed one in to give Detroit a 2-0 lead with 43 seconds left in the first period.

A goal that late in the period can demoralize a team, but it was especially deflating for the Ducks, who had controlled the play in the early minutes but were thwarted by their own lack of creativity on the power play and the Red Wings’ fearless shot-blocking.

“Its always nice to get some power plays going,” said winger Mikael Samuelsson, whose slick pass to Johan Franzen set up Detroit’s first goal, at 11:09 of the first period.

Detroit goaltender Dominik Hasek was unequivocal in analyzing the Ducks’ undoing.

“They spend too much time in the penalty box,” he said. “That defense wasn’t as good as in our building. Except for the first 10 minutes, we played our game.

“And as I say, you cannot win games when you go to the penalty box like they did.”

The Ducks led the NHL in penalty minutes over the 82-game season and their average of 20 penalty minutes per game in the playoffs is the highest among the four conference finalists. A series of needless penalties in the second period took away any chance they might have had of staging a rally Tuesday.

“It killed most of our legs,” Getzlaf said. “Discipline’s got to come from within.”

Last spring, the Ducks split the first two games of their first-round series against Calgary and came home for a stinker of a 5-2 loss to the Flames. They won the series in seven games, but the Red Wings are a far better team than those Flames were.

Asked what the Ducks must fix before Game 4 on Thursday, Getzlaf cited the many battles they had lost and the weak special teams performances.

“We need to relax here for a second and get our attitude back and get the momentum going our way,” he said.

A few more foolish penalties, and their momentum will carry them to a loss in a series they could have won.

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