Ducks slamming door on penalty box, season
Helene Elliott
Anaheim continues to pay the penalty for costly mistakes, giving up two more power-play goals in a 5-2 loss.
Now, it's time for the Ducks to panic.
Unable or unwilling to learn from the senseless mistakes that doomed them to defeat in the opener of their playoff series against the Dallas Stars, the Ducks on Saturday repeated many of those gaffes -- and added a few new ones to their repertoire.
With a 5-2 loss to the Stars in front of an early exiting crowd at the Honda Center, the Ducks skidded within two losses of the end of their reign as Stanley Cup champions. Of the 280 previous times teams have trailed, 2-0, in a best-of-seven series, only 37 have rallied to win, a daunting 13.2% success rate.
The Ducks will not pad that percentage.
Repeating as the Cup champion is so difficult that no one has done it since the Detroit Red Wings in 1997 and 1998. The season is long, the summer is short, and it's difficult to recreate the kind of hunger that fuels a first-time champion.
On that level, failure to win back-to-back titles is understandable.
What's embarrassing is that the Ducks have not sustained any energy or fire for more than a few minutes here and there, that they've been submissive and sloppy when the situation called for assertiveness and precision.
Other than a brief display of the grinding game that has been the foundation of their success and allowed them to tie the score, 2-2, late in the second period, they haven't put up a fight, figuratively or literally, in these first two games.
They haven't peppered Dallas goaltender Marty Turco with shots, fought for rebounds, or used their muscle to do more than slam the door to the penalty box.
They've certainly had enough practice at that: they gave the Stars seven power plays on Thursday, and the Stars capitalized four times. On Saturday the Ducks conceded six power plays, and two of those led to goals.
"You give up six power-play goals, your chances to win in this league are absolutely zero," Ducks winger Teemu Selanne said.
They played better on Saturday than they had on Thursday, but that qualifies as little more than a shred of consolation.
Selanne, playing right wing with Ryan Getzlaf and Todd Bertuzzi, was far more involved and active than in the Ducks' 4-0 loss in the series opener. He scored the Ducks' first goal, at 3:41 of the first period.
"I think we could easily have scored three, four goals," Selanne said. "The day they start going in, we're going to have a better chance in this series."
