Ducks fall short in a shootout

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- Much like their spirited challenge for the net as teammates the last two seasons, the Ducks’ Jean-Sebastien Giguere and Phoenix’s Ilya Bryzgalov brought the best out of each other Saturday night.

Perhaps this game should have been played four years ago when the NHL was content with allowing games to end in a tie. Both were that sharp from the first puck drop.

But the league saw fit to make sure there was a winner and a loser by putting in the shootout after the lockout, which is just what it took to decide a 3-2 victory by the Coyotes at Jobing.com Arena.

The difference was that Peter Mueller scored on Giguere and the Ducks couldn’t put one by Bryzgalov in their three attempts. Not surprisingly, the Ducks weren’t all that disappointed with this defeat after winning 24 hours earlier at home.

“The points at this time of the year are so important that you’ll do anything to get yourself a point,” Giguere said. “For us, on a back to back on the road, we’ll take the point. It’s a positive step for us.”

All the scoring took place in the first two periods as both teams settled into a defensive struggle with both Giguere and Bryzgalov serving as human walls in front of their nets.

It took deft deflections by Ryan Getzlaf and Doug Weight to get pucks by Bryzgalov. Meanwhile, Giguere was beaten on shots by Shane Doan and Steven Reinprecht that he had little chance to make saves on.

The final count: Giguere made 32 saves and Bryzgalov stopped 29 shots.

“They both played really well,” said Getzlaf, who extended his point-scoring streak to six games. “They’re some of the best goalies in the league. Jiggy’s always been a No. 1 and this is Bryz’s chance to be a No. 1. When you’ve got goaltenders like that, you’ve got to get in front of them and tip pucks.”

Boosted by the confidence of having Bryzgalov in their net, the Coyotes are 13-8-1 since claiming him off waivers from the Ducks on Nov. 17. Four wins in a row and eight in their last 11 have their confidence soaring.

“It’s a big win for us because we continue to try to climb [to] the playoffs,” Bryzgalov said. “It’s not that far right now. If we continue to play well in the defensive zone and score some goals, I think we will be fine.

“The playoffs are not that far away. We have to believe in this dream right now.”

Giguere said he couldn’t get caught up in facing off against his former understudy for the first time.

“Bryz is a good goalie, we know that and I know that,” he said. “It was fun to play against him but saying that, it was the Ducks against the Coyotes. You really got to focus on the job. You can’t really worry about what the other goalie does.

“Saying that, you know he’s going to play a good game and you’ve got to be on the top your game if you want to be successful.”

Getzlaf and Weight each gave the Ducks a lead but neither held up. Doan put a wrist shot by Giguere early in the second period to tie the score, 1-1, but Weight answered 37 seconds later.

Reinprecht took care of that deficit when he took a nice pass down low from Derek Morris and slammed it into a open net when Giguere lost sight of Morris through the traffic in front of him. It ended a streak of 13 power plays the Ducks erased.

“We had an opportunity to get an extra one,” Ducks Coach Randy Carlyle said. “I thought we played fairly well for the most part other than the fact that there were 10 minutes in the second period where we started turning the puck over.”

Brandon Bochenski made his Ducks debut as he took Bobby Ryan’s place in the lineup. Bochenski took 19 shifts but was not credited with a shot in 11 minutes 32 seconds of ice time.

Bochenski was acquired from Boston on Tuesday for defenseman Shane Hnidy and a draft pick.

“It was hard to really get an analysis on one game,” Carlyle said. “We’ll wait and see.”

eric.stephens@latimes.com