Ducks Suffer Real Setback

VANCOUVER, Canada — There was a big game here Friday night. The Vancouver Canucks knew it. The second sellout crowd of 18,422 this season at General Motors Place knew it.

The Mighty Ducks were clueless.

Instead of rising to the challenge, the Ducks collapsed en route to a mind-boggling 8-1 loss to the Canucks. They were outhustled, outclassed and outsmarted in giving up four goals in the final 8:53 of the second period.

“It was a total team breakdown,” Coach Craig Hartsburg said. “It shocks me. It shocks me.”

Asked for his reaction to Hartsburg’s comments, defenseman Oleg Tverdovsky said, “He’s right. It was probably the biggest game of the year for us and we didn’t show up.”

However tempting it may be to write off the Ducks after Friday’s clunker, it simply can’t be done. They have six games remaining and the race for the final Stanley Cup playoff spots in the Western Conference is wide open.

The Ducks and Canucks are tied with 76 points--three behind the eighth-place Phoenix Coyotes. The San Jose Sharks and Edmonton Oilers each have 80 points.

Next for the Ducks: Phoenix, loser of six consecutive, on Sunday at the Arrowhead Pond. It will be the Ducks’ eighth game in 13 nights.

“We’ve regrouped numerous times this year,” Hartsburg said. “We’ve got less than 48 hours to get back on track.”

If the Ducks miss the playoffs--and their task got tougher after Friday--they have only themselves to blame.

After Paul Kariya’s power-play goal tied the score, 1-1, 27 seconds into the second period, the Ducks buzzed Vancouver goalie Felix Potvin’s net. But the Ducks came up empty.

At a TV timeout with 9:16 left in the period, the Ducks had made up for a sluggish start in which they were outshot, 11-5, in the first period.

“We got it going pretty good in the first 10 minutes of the second period, but we couldn’t sustain it,” Hartsburg said.

Somebody named Peter Schaefer then put a dagger in the Ducks’ hearts.

First, Schaefer outskated the Ducks to a loose puck behind Guy Hebert’s net, then scored on a textbook wraparound at the right goal post at 11:07. Schaefer had zoomed past defenseman Kevin Haller to score Vancouver’s first goal 6:37 into the game.

Next, Schaefer raced by the Ducks again to take possession of a free puck behind the net. Schaefer fed a centering pass for Markus Naslund into the right faceoff circle. Naslund tipped the puck to Mark Messier, who unleashed a missile past Hebert for a 3-1 Vancouver lead at 14:09.

Finally, Schaefer pried loose a puck in his own zone, then flipped a high outlet pass to Harold Druken at center ice. Druken fed Greg Hawgood, who then slipped a cross-ice pass to an onrushing Matt Cooke.

Hebert had no chance to make a sliding save and the Canucks had a 4-1 lead at 18:22.

The shellshocked Ducks then watched Andrew Cassels score from point-blank range for a 5-1 Vancouver advantage at 19:18.

Game over.

Backup Dominic Roussel replaced Hebert, who was making his sixth start in 10 days.

Certainly, the Canucks’ second-period onslaught was not Hebert’s fault. Thanks to some poor work in the trenches by the Ducks, there weren’t any cheap ones in the five goals Vancouver scored against him.

“I thought Guy saved our butts in the first period,” Hartsburg said. “I took him out to get him some rest.”

Naslund and Todd Bertuzzi, who scored twice, increased the Canucks’ lead to a staggering 8-1 with third-period goals.

The eight goals against the Ducks were the most they had given up since losing, 4-2, March 14 to the Colorado Avalanche. The Ducks had given up only nine goals during a 3-1-1 stretch since the loss to Colorado.

“We got outplayed on every inch of the ice,” Tverdovsky said. “They were quicker than we were. I have no answer why. We made a few mistakes in the defensive zone and it killed us.”

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PLAYOFF RACE

The race for final four of eight Western Conference playoff spots is going to the wire (G=Games left):

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No. Team Pts. G 5. KINGS 83 8 6. San Jose 80 7 7. Edmonton 80 8 8. Phoenix 79 8 9. DUCKS 76 6 10. Vancouver 76 7 11. Calgary 72 7

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