Duck Star Power Outshines Kings

The Mighty Ducks’ three stars sparkled for them Sunday. The Kings, playing without suspended captain Rob Blake, had no stars. So, was it any wonder the Ducks smoked the Kings, 3-0, before an announced sellout crowd of 17,174 at the Arrowhead Pond?

Teemu Selanne scored twice for the Ducks, his first goals since injuring his right thigh Nov. 11 against the Carolina Hurricanes. It had been a seven-game drought for Selanne.

Paul Kariya added a goal, his first since Nov. 27 against the expansion Nashville Predators. Kariya went six games without a goal.

Goalie Guy Hebert weathered the Kings’ solid first-period effort, stopped all 35 shots he faced by game’s end and recorded his second consecutive shutout. Hebert also shut out the Washington Capitals, 1-0, Friday.

But Kariya bristled when a reporter used the word “good” to describe the Ducks’ rise to a 11-11-6 record with a 3-0-1 unbeaten streak.

“Good?” he asked, incredulous. “We’re a .500 team. There’s a long ways to go in the season. Good teams don’t win three out of however many road games we’ve had [14].”

Good teams tend to thump bad teams, however.

This was not the best game the Ducks have played this season, but it was far from their worst showing. Certainly, it was plenty to defeat the Kings for the second time this season and even the series between the teams at 12-12-5. And when the Kings chipped in with several bonehead plays, it only got easier.

For instance, King center Jozef Stumpel fed a perfect centering pass into the slot late in the second period. One problem: it was slot he was supposed to be defending.

Selanne intercepted and lifted a neat backhander past King goalie Stephane Fiset. The goal gave the Ducks a 2-0 lead at 16:37 of the second period. Earlier in the period, Selanne split King defensemen Doug Bodger and Steve Duchesne and beat Fiset for a power-play goal at 10:13.

Next, Philippe Boucher attempted to send a clearing pass to Duchesne in the neutral zone. Kariya got there first, roared toward the net and deposited a backhander behind Fiset for a 3-0 Duck lead at 12:23 of the third period.

“The effort was there,” King Coach Larry Robinson said. “We just couldn’t score any goals. We made about three errors and the errors were to the wrong people.”

The Kings’ effort was indeed sound in the first 20 minutes, but their intensity clearly waned in the final two periods.

How else to explain the brutal passes by Stumpel and Boucher?

Neither is a rookie. Neither is known to make a habit of such mistakes. But Selanne and Kariya made sure the Kings paid the price for the gaffes.

After all, it wasn’t as if it were some great surprise to see Selanne and Kariya scoring goals.

“When they smell blood, they’re lethal,” King defenseman Mattias Norstrom said of Selanne and Kariya. “They had maybe five good chances and they had three goals. That’s what [the Ducks] want. When they play like they did tonight, we fish the puck out of the net a lot.”

The Kings might have done it a lot more often if not for Fiset, who stopped 31 of 34 shots and played far better than any of his teammates Sunday.

Selanne fanned at the left goal post and didn’t get good wood on another point-blank chance moments before his first goal of the game. In the third period, Selanne failed to convert from the slot on Kariya’s pass to him from behind the net.

“He could have had five or six goals tonight,” Kariya said.

Selanne agreed, although he would have been satisfied with one.

“I wasn’t getting to that point,” Selanne said when asked if he was frustrated by his goal-scoring slump. “After I missed that one [at the post on the power play], I was thinking, ‘This is a joke right here.’ But what a relief. It’s nice to get my confidence back.”

At game’s end, it was difficult to tell which setup pass he was happier to receive--the one from Kariya on the power-play goal or the errant one from Stumpel.

“I knew Paul saw me and I knew I had more speed than those guys [Bodger and Duchesne],” Selanne said.

What about Stumpel’s pass?

“Well, I didn’t expect it,” Selanne said diplomatically.

One goal was about all Hebert needed to blank the Kings and end their all-too-brief two-game winning streak. As the final minutes ticked by, the only drama left was whether Hebert would earn his first career back-to-back shutouts.

“I was sitting on the bench and I said to Antti [Aalto, a fellow Finn], ‘What’s wrong with our goalie? Nobody can beat him,’ ” Selanne said, cracking a wide smile.