Ducks fall short against Red Wings

The Ducks may have had too much of their usual vigor in another showdown with the Detroit Red Wings.

Getting physical against Detroit worked in last season’s Western Conference finals, but the Stanley Cup champions couldn’t replicate that Wednesday night at the Honda Center. Instead, they were shown the door by the NHL’s top team thus far.

Brian Rafalski and Valtteri Filppula got the Red Wings goals in the first two periods and they held on for a 2-1 victory over the Ducks in front of a sellout crowd of 17,174.

In improving to a league-best 37-10-4, the Red Wings got their first regular-season win in Anaheim since March 1, 2006. They got a strong game from Dominik Hasek, who made 24 saves to overcome Jean-Sebastien Giguere’s 31-save effort.

“I think it is a big rivalry,” Hasek said. “First of all, they are the Stanley Cup champions and they play like champions. They are a very confident team. They beat us last year and most of the time we lose in this building.

“So this was a big game for us to show them we can win in this building also.”

It wasn’t just another game in the dog days of January.

Not when Ducks captain Chris Pronger dropped his gloves to fight Dan Cleary less than seven minutes into it. Or when Doug Weight tried to get unwilling Red Wings defenseman Brett Lebda into another tussle minutes later.

“That’s our game,” Ducks defenseman Francois Beauchemin said.

“Since we played them in the playoffs last year, they knew our plan and maybe they wanted to respond.”

But the Ducks’ undisciplined ways, which they’ve fought to control for the last few weeks, rose back to the surface and hurt them.

As five Ducks -- Pronger, Weight, Corey Perry, Todd Bertuzzi and Todd Marchant -- sat in the penalty box, Rafalski gave Detroit a 1-0 lead on a five-on-three power play created when Bertuzzi and Marchant took penalties 14 seconds apart.

“It’s tough to defend a five-on-three in the NHL,” Ducks Coach Randy Carlyle said. “You’re expected to score. All I’d like to [see] is maybe we’d have one of those.”

In all, the Ducks spent a lot of time killing penalties as the Red Wings had five power plays.

“Emotions run high,” Ducks winger Rob Niedermayer said. “We definitely have to control that a lot better. Especially early on. . . . We gave them a few power plays early and they sort of got some momentum from that.”

Bad luck hurt the Ducks as they neared the midway point of the second.

Beauchemin tried to shoot the puck up the middle of the ice to clear it out of their zone but his stick snapped and Filppula jumped on the turnover.

Filppula passed it to Tomas Kopecky on the left side to create a two-on-one with Beauchemin trying to defend without a stick in front of Giguere. Kopecky delivered a return feed to Filppula, who scored.

“I tried to make a pass and the shaft broke in half,” Beauchemin said. “They usually break in the blades but tonight I had two in three shifts that broke the shafts. There’s nothing I can do.

“I break maybe five or six sticks all year long and tonight I had two.”

The Ducks (27-19-6) managed to get one back midway through the third when their power play delivered for the fifth consecutive game.

Using an effective screen by Bertuzzi, Pronger beat Hasek with a hard shot from the point for his second goal in three games and 11th of the season.

It couldn’t keep them from losing consecutive games in regulation for the first time since Nov. 29-30 against Calgary and Vancouver on the road. Now the Ducks will try to halt their small slide tonight against the Kings.

“The biggest game of the year for us,” Carlyle said.

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eric.stephens@latimes.com