Ducks stay on the mark

The night may have been about all the young talent that was on the ice Monday night at the Honda Center with the Pittsburgh Penguins making their first visit in four years but the Ducks showed there is a place in the game for the wily veterans.

Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin have turned the NHL upside down and given the league some much-needed buzz but Teemu Selanne and Scott Niedermayer have been superstars for years and the two helped the Ducks’ juggernaut march on.

Forty-four seconds into overtime, Selanne scored off a brilliant cross-ice pass from Niedermayer for a 3-2 victory that kept the Ducks as the only team without a regulation loss before an announced crowd of 16,599.

Crosby and Malkin each had one assist. The night, however, wound up being about the 35-year-old Selanne.

Now completely out of his early goal-scoring slump, Selanne scored for the third time in three games with an easy punch-in past Pittsburgh goalie Jocelyn Thibault.

“Scotty made a great pass there,� Selanne said. “There’s a reason why he makes $7 million a year. He’s the best defenseman in the league.�

The Ducks (11-0-4) tied the 1983-84 Edmonton Oilers’ league mark for starting the season with points in 15 consecutive games.

They won despite missing on a number of scoring chances and the play of Thibault, who made 37 saves in his first start, giving Marc-Andre Fleury a rest.

“I knew that’s the play they were looking for,� Thibault said. “Niedermayer’s attacking the net and I knew he was looking for the guys that score. Niedermayer had a good angle on me and I had to respect the shot. He made a great play.�

Selanne could have won it in regulation when he stole the puck from Penguins forward Dominic Moore in the offensive zone and went in on a breakaway but his backhand try went wide of the net. So he just waited for overtime.

“It’s more entertaining this way,� he joked. “That’s what the people want.�

Only 21 seconds into the extra five minutes, Selanne got a step on defenseman Noah Welch and drew a tripping penalty. Thirty-one seconds later, the forward raised his hands in the air and the game was over.

“It was a great play by Teemu,� Niedermayer said. “We saw open ice because they put two guys high on us. Teemu came in with a lot of speed and I don’t think anyone was aware of him. I tried to find a way to get it over to him.�

The Ducks entered the game with the league’s second-ranked power play but it hardly looked like it judging by their shoddy work with the man advantage for much of the first two periods.

Through a combination of aggressive penalty killing by the Penguins and their own sloppy passing, the Ducks had trouble getting shots on the net in their first five chances. The sixth time finally was the charm.

Corey Perry put an end to the drought at 13:13 of the second. Ryan Getzlaf worked the puck around the perimeter to Chris Pronger, who passed it to Niedermayer.

Niedermayer’s shot from the slot area was saved by Thibault but Perry quickly jumped on the rebound before Thibault could react and punched in his fourth goal of the season.

“We knew we weren’t making good plays with the puck,� Niedermayer said.

The Ducks grabbed a 1-0 lead in the first courtesy of Chris Kunitz’s team-leading seventh goal off a setup from Selanne. Before they could get comfortable, the game was tied 21 seconds later when Pittsburgh center Dominic Moore jammed in a shot past Jean-Sebastien Giguere.

Chris Thorburn made it 2-1 later in the period when he put in a rebound of a shot by Malkin for his first NHL goal.

“We didn’t have the greatest first period,� Ducks Coach Randy Carlyle said. “I think we were trying to be too cute and tried to do too much.�

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