Selanne doesn’t want it to finish

Teemu Selanne didn’t come back from retirement to lose in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

He didn’t give up playing golf and bonding with his newborn daughter to stumble through a succession of frustrating defeats and a rude dismissal at the hands of the Dallas Stars.

The Finnish right wing played Friday as if he wanted to win. And for the first time in five games, so did the rest of the Ducks.

Selanne’s power-play goal 48 seconds into the third period ensured that the Ducks’ reign as champions would last another few days, at least. With a two-man advantage, Selanne corralled the rebound of a Chris Pronger shot and snapped it past Marty Turco for the third goal in the Ducks’ 5-2 victory at the Honda Center, inspiring roars from a crowd that wasn’t ready for the season to end.

Selanne also assisted on the Ducks’ fourth goal, by Sean O’Donnell, at 12:05, chiming in with the revived crowd to turn the Honda Center into the noisy, happy caldron it was last spring.

The Ducks can still be eliminated if they lose Game 6 Sunday at Dallas. But if they can produce the same verve and life they showed Friday in their first encounter with a potential season finale, they might have a chance to take this to seven games in Anaheim on Tuesday.

Before the game, Selanne said he saw only “one way” for the Ducks to go -- up.

“I really believe this is the group that can do it,” he said.

“It’s going to be tough, but there’s teams that have done it before, so that’s a good sign.”

He had extra incentive Friday, because the end of the season could also bring the end of his glorious NHL career.

After a 48-goal season and splendid playoff performance, he retired after the Ducks won the Cup last June. The timing seemed perfect. What better ending could there be than going out on top, surrounded by friends and family and knowing that your name will soon be engraved on that great shiny trophy?

After a few months at home, Selanne felt his competitive instincts kick in. He returned in February, a godsend to a team that was struggling to score goals -- and still is -- and contributed 12 goals and 23 points in 26 games.

“The passion for the game is just stronger than anything else,” he said of his decision to play again.

“I’ve been very happy. I really enjoyed to come here every day. I’m 100% sure that the decision was right. I really enjoyed it. I have the feeling there’s a lot of hockey left in me.”

In the Ducks too, apparently. They banged and crashed and rode a 40-save performance by goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere -- his best this spring -- to extend the series.

They extended Selanne’s career too.

A loss Friday would have forced him to contemplate whether his next retirement will be his last. He will be 38 in July, and although his enthusiasm hasn’t waned, his hands haven’t quite caught up with some of the passes he has been getting.

His timing being off a split-second might not seem like much of a problem, but for Selanne and the goal-starved Ducks, it meant a lot.

“It’s one of those things that when you’re off a little bit here and there it’s going to cause big problems,” he said, speaking about the team in terms that also applied to himself.

“Obviously there’s things we haven’t done really well.”

They did enough things well Friday.

Of course, no Ducks game would be official unless they took some needless penalties, and they kept that tradition alive Friday.

Not until their fifth goal, scored by Todd Marchant with 84 seconds to play into an empty net, was the triumph secure.

“Everybody did their jobs and came out with a lot of energy,” Selanne said. “But still we took five, six penalties. It looked like penalty-killing practice.”

In the end, they played like champions when forced to. That allowed Selanne to push aside thoughts about whether he will hang up his skates for good this summer.

“You get to the point of your career where you go one little short time at a time, those kinds of things come into your mind,” he said.

“But still I try not to think about that. I think we still have a mission to do here and this is a huge chance for us. So I haven’t really thought about that too much.”

Sometimes it’s better to play, not think, to let muscle memory and habit take over and push analysis and deep thought aside.

It was best that way for Selanne -- as it was for defenseman Sean O’Donnell, who committed a horrible turnover in Game 4 at Dallas on Thursday but more than redeemed himself with a terrific pass to Corey Perry on the Ducks’ first goal and by scoring the team’s fourth goal.

It will take two more games like this for the Ducks to have a chance to become the first team to win back-to-back Cup championships since the 1997 and 1998 Detroit Red Wings.

It will be another night of looking into the abyss and avoiding a fall.

Selanne didn’t come back to take that tumble.

“There has to be happy ending for this,” he said.

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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.