These Ducks don’t appear to be in a row

A year ago, the Ducks cruised through the season fueled by the conviction they were on a mission that would not end until they hoisted the Stanley Cup.

This season, they scrambled to score goals, find effective line combinations, and stay out of the penalty box.

“I think last year we had more of that eye of the tiger, ‘We need to do this,’ ” defenseman Chris Pronger said.

“Going into this year it was, ‘Man, it’s here already?’ ”

A long playoff journey and short summer made it feel as if the Ducks began defending their title a few days after the last speck of confetti was scraped off the ice at the Honda Center.

It also feels like their reign will end short of a repeat.

It won’t end in the first round against the Dallas Stars, a series that begins tonight in Anaheim.

Maybe not in the second round, either. The Ducks’ terrific goaltending -- second-best in the NHL this season -- and experienced defense should compensate for an offense that was the weakest among the 16 playoff qualifiers.

Their reign will end, though, leaving the Detroit Red Wings of 1996-97 and 1997-98 as the last team to win back-to-back championships.

They gave it a good ride despite injuries that took goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere, checking center Samuel Pahlsson and defenseman Mathieu Schneider out of the lineup for stretches.

And no team could avoid a decline after losing a playoff MVP and a 48-goal scorer to retirement, as the Ducks lost defenseman Scott Niedermayer and right wing Teemu Selanne for much of the season.

Actually, the Ducks’ slip was surprisingly small. At 47-27-8 with 102 points, they were one win and eight points short of last season’s total, and in a conference that beefed up to imitate them after they mucked and muscled their way to the Cup.

They were fourth in the West and fifth overall, far better than some recent defending champions.

Carolina won the Cup in 2006 but has missed the playoffs since. Tampa Bay won in 2004 and, after the lost lockout season, barely made the playoffs in 2006 and lost in the first round.

“I think our dropoff was the first 20 or so games. I think there was a bit of a Cup hangover,” Giguere said. “The energy and the focus weren’t there at the beginning of the year.

“But I think we’ve proven since Scotty came back and even more since Teemu came back that our focus is there and our energy is back and that our hunger to win is there.”

That must be balanced against their lack of depth up the middle, a consequence of trading Andy McDonald -- their top playoff goal-scorer -- last spring for Doug Weight to create salary-cap space for Niedermayer to return.

Ryan Getzlaf is their only scoring center. Weight, projected to bring experience and an offensive spark, hasn’t done much of anything.

General Manager Brian Burke conceded his team has had trouble finding a second scoring line but said his decision wasn’t whether he’d be better off with McDonald or Weight but whether, given a salary-cap squeeze, he’d be better off keeping McDonald or Schneider.

“Defense has always been the backbone of my teams,” he said Wednesday.

That’s fine. But scoring a few goals would help too.

Despite stellar personnel, the power play underachieved at 16.6%, 20th in the NHL. A team that labors to score needs better power-play support than that.

Also working against the Ducks is the sword hanging over Pronger, just back from an eight-game suspension for stepping on the leg of Vancouver’s Ryan Kesler.

As a multiple offender who served a pair of one-game suspensions last spring, Pronger will be watched closely by NHL officials. A cross-eyed glance at an opponent may get him suspended. Continued poor impulse control could trigger a sentence of five games or more, a loss the Ducks would have difficulty withstanding.

Coach Randy Carlyle said he and Burke talked to Pronger about staying within the rules but neither wants him to change.

“We think that he has to play the game with that competitive edge to continue to be an elite defenseman, and we expect him to do so,” Carlyle said.

Then they’ll have to expect to do without him at least once.

Burke has done an extraordinary job to maintain a strong team under economic rules designed to inflict parity and spread talent around. He said he has faith in his team and likes its chances.

“I think this team has been through way more adversity, injuries and trying circumstances than last year’s team,” he said. “I also think this team is better on paper, especially if we get Corey Perry back [from injury].

“You take out Andy McDonald and Dustin Penner and put in Mathieu Schneider and Todd Bertuzzi and I think you can make a real good case that we’re better. We just haven’t played with the same confidence or swagger last year’s team had.”

That could develop. But that still won’t bring about the same happy ending.

“I feel very good about this,” Selanne said, “but I still want to see the same hunger that we had last year and the same fire what we had. The passion. That’s the only thing that you really want to see, because everything else follows.”

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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.

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