Ducks facing a defining moment

Today’s game at Joe Louis Arena will define the Ducks as a team not only this spring but for years to come.

The fifth game of the Western Conference finals will be the one in which they stop taking the careless penalties that have sapped their energy and fueled the Red Wings’ offense, or it will be another showcase for their lack of discipline.

It will be the day they realize that mental toughness is more important than sheer brawn, or another occasion on which they let their emotions overrule their heads.

It’s their choice.

They can use their abundant talent to its fullest, or they can be drawn into tripping and hooking and holding and continue to tax their overworked defense and disrupt the flow of their offense.

They say they have chosen how they want to be known.

“We’re looking to have our best game of the year,” winger Dustin Penner said.

It will take no less than that to defeat the Red Wings, who will be buoyed by the energy of their loud, octopus-tossing fans.

The Red Wings, though anchored by a core of veterans, are also seeking a defining moment. They’re still forging their identity in their first season without prolific winger Brendan Shanahan, who left as a free agent, and longtime captain Steve Yzerman, who retired last spring.

Although they lost that duo’s experience and poise, players such as Johan Franzen and Valtteri Filppula are providing energy that was missing during the team’s early playoff exits the last few seasons.

Youngsters Brett Lebda and Kyle Quincey have taken on more responsibility in the absence of injured defensemen Mathieu Schneider and Niklas Kronwall, but Detroit’s defense as a whole has had its share of hairy moments.

The Red Wings haven’t reached the conference finals since their last championship run, in 2002, but after scoring at least one power-play goal in each of the first four games and outshooting the Ducks for the first time in Game 4, they believe they’re getting stronger.

“We’ve got more confidence. That’s how we’ve gotten better,” said winger Mikael Samuelsson, who had an assist in the 5-3 loss at Anaheim on Thursday that tied the series at two games each.

“The first series, everybody was a little nervous,” Samuelsson said of the Red Wings’ matchup against the Calgary Flames, “and once we got through that we started to come around against San Jose. In this series, I think we started off real bad and we’ve played better and better as we went on.”

They have, undeniably, been skillful at countering the Ducks’ strategy.

When the Ducks figured out how to stop Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg, who were probably the best players on the ice in the first two games, Coach Mike Babcock broke them up and reconfigured his lines. “A cat-and-mouse game,” Ducks Coach Randy Carlyle said.

The cat won, at least in Detroit’s 5-0 rout in Game 3.

Babcock created an effective trio in Dan Cleary, Robert Lang and Todd Bertuzzi, who accounted for four goals in the last two games. All three are big and are good around the net, posing problems for the Ducks because they can finish and they can screen goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere on shots from the perimeter.

“Cleary has been on a couple of lines in the playoffs and the line he’s on is pretty good,” Babcock said. “So maybe that’s part of it.”

But Babcock also noted that the line is deficient defensively, which was glaringly obvious when Bertuzzi gave the puck away to set up the Ducks’ first goal on Thursday.

“The only thing with that line last game was they traded chances,” Babcock said. “I’m not interested in that.”

The Ducks have actually begun to convert some of their power-play chances, which they correctly see as a favorable omen.

Despite the absence Thursday of power-play triggerman Chris Pronger, who served a league-imposed suspension for his nasty hit on Tomas Holmstrom in Game 3, the Ducks ended an 0-for-16 series drought by scoring twice with a man advantage. They’ll have Pronger and his booming shot back today, and that can only mean they’ll get better.

They can also be encouraged that Teemu Selanne, bumped and hounded into becoming invisible over the first three games, also showed up in Game 4 with a one-goal, two-assist performance.

“We didn’t play well in Game 3, and to come out the next game and have a strong effort was a big turning point for us,” winger Travis Moen said. “Hopefully, we keep that going.

“They’ve been playing great all series. There’s a lot of skill out there. They’ve matched our hitting.

“If we can keep our power play going, it will be an important part of our offense.”

If the Ducks win today in Detroit, where they split the first two games of the series and might have won both if not for two unfortunate deflections off defenseman Francois Beauchemin, they will have a chance to finish off the Red Wings on Tuesday at Anaheim.

More than that, they will be the team that their talent suggests they can and should be.

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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.