Ducks slamming door on penalty box, season

Now, it’s time for the Ducks to panic.

Unable or unwilling to learn from the senseless mistakes that doomed them to defeat in the opener of their playoff series against the Dallas Stars, the Ducks on Saturday repeated many of those gaffes -- and added a few new ones to their repertoire.

With a 5-2 loss to the Stars in front of an early exiting crowd at the Honda Center, the Ducks skidded within two losses of the end of their reign as Stanley Cup champions. Of the 280 previous times teams have trailed, 2-0, in a best-of-seven series, only 37 have rallied to win, a daunting 13.2% success rate.

The Ducks will not pad that percentage.

Repeating as the Cup champion is so difficult that no one has done it since the Detroit Red Wings in 1997 and 1998. The season is long, the summer is short, and it’s difficult to recreate the kind of hunger that fuels a first-time champion.

On that level, failure to win back-to-back titles is understandable.

What’s embarrassing is that the Ducks have not sustained any energy or fire for more than a few minutes here and there, that they’ve been submissive and sloppy when the situation called for assertiveness and precision.

Other than a brief display of the grinding game that has been the foundation of their success and allowed them to tie the score, 2-2, late in the second period, they haven’t put up a fight, figuratively or literally, in these first two games.

They haven’t peppered Dallas goaltender Marty Turco with shots, fought for rebounds, or used their muscle to do more than slam the door to the penalty box.

They’ve certainly had enough practice at that: they gave the Stars seven power plays on Thursday, and the Stars capitalized four times. On Saturday the Ducks conceded six power plays, and two of those led to goals.

“You give up six power-play goals, your chances to win in this league are absolutely zero,” Ducks winger Teemu Selanne said.

They played better on Saturday than they had on Thursday, but that qualifies as little more than a shred of consolation.

Selanne, playing right wing with Ryan Getzlaf and Todd Bertuzzi, was far more involved and active than in the Ducks’ 4-0 loss in the series opener. He scored the Ducks’ first goal, at 3:41 of the first period.

“I think we could easily have scored three, four goals,” Selanne said. “The day they start going in, we’re going to have a better chance in this series.”

That day must come soon. Try Tuesday.

“We have to realize we still have life,” defenseman Scott Niedermayer said. “We have a couple of days to regroup and we’ll get on the road and get a change of scenery.”

Which may only precede a fade to black for the Ducks’ hopes of a second championship.

It doesn’t matter where they play if they continue to take penalties that don’t prevent goals or blunt scoring chances, penalties in the offensive zone that killed their momentum and set them back on a treadmill to nowhere.

“If you can’t kill the penalties, you shouldn’t take them,” Selanne said. “If you have to take the penalties, you kill them.”

The play of the multimillion-dollar defense constructed by General Manager Brian Burke was barely worth a dime. Niedermayer was the best of the bunch, assisting on the Ducks’ first goal.

But even he committed an interference penalty beside the Stars’ goal in the first period and was called for hooking early in the second period to give the Stars an advantage they converted for their second goal.

Goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere, who had made a flurry of alert saves to keep them in the game when Dallas’ lead was merely 2-1, gave up a deflating goal to Brad Richards at 6:42 of the third period, 55 seconds after Mike Modano’s long, power-play blast had given the Stars a 3-2 lead.

For the Stars, who have not gotten past the second round of the playoffs since they lost to New Jersey in the 2000 Cup finals, the victory continued a stunning turnaround. They had struggled during the final month of the season, and Richards, acquired from Tampa Bay on Feb. 26 for three promising young players and a draft pick, was on the verge of being labeled a bust.

What a difference the playoffs have made: Richards, who had a goal and an assist on Saturday, has three points in two games. The Stars, with solid special-teams play and unflappable poise, have taken two crucial steps toward a first-round upset.

“It’s like we’re stepping into a new phase of our team,” Stars Coach Dave Tippett said.

Tippett, it should be noted, was an assistant coach of the Kings for three seasons. His main responsibility was the power play, which had ranked 24th in the league when he took it over. By the time he was hired to coach the Stars, the Kings’ power play was the best in the NHL.

Anyone who can make anything associated with the Kings the best in the league must be a genius.

But he hasn’t even had to resort to miracles in this series because the Ducks have contributed so much to their own self-destruction.

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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.