Cup defense, like Ducks' defense, is a flop

DALLAS -- One moment, they were the defending Stanley Cup champions.

The next, just another losing team on the wrong side of the handshake line at the end of a playoff series.

The Ducks' reign ended Sunday with a 4-1 loss to the Dallas Stars, six games into the first round. The seeds for its demise were planted soon after it began, when they endured a short summer, a long wait for Teemu Selanne and Scott Niedermayer to return from retirement, and an impossible quest to find the drive that fueled them last spring.

"When you have won there's a little bit [of] satisfaction inside your body. You try hard but when you're a little bit off here and there, that's why you can't win," Selanne said.

"You need every player's commitment and work ethic and all the tools every player can bring. If you can't, even if you're off a little bit here and there, you can't do it."

The Ducks had prolonged the series by winning at Anaheim on Friday, and for a while Sunday they seemed determined to push it to the limit, to a seventh game at home.

But their offense misfired -- again -- their discipline evaporated -- again -- and their penalty killing was helpless. The Stars converted 10 of 38 advantages in the series; the Ducks capitalized on only five of 24 power plays.

"In the playoffs everything kind of fell short in our overall game," goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere said.

"I don't know what the answer is."

The two goals Dallas scored 52 seconds apart early in the third period to take a 2-1 lead might as well have been 20, so feeble was the Ducks' offense.

They didn't take a shot for a span of 23 minutes 58 seconds, from 4:49 of the second period to 8:47 of the third.

"We were doing things OK and then they come in with those two quick goals and it changes the game right around," Niedermayer said. "That's the fine line you walk when you're in that situation."

They had played most of the season with that fine line. On Sunday, as in losing the first two games of this series at home, they made too many errors.

That, too, wasn't a new problem.

When Niedermayer returned and General Manager Brian Burke had to make salary-cap space for him this season and next, Burke had to choose between trading center Andy McDonald or defenseman Mathieu Schneider. He dealt McDonald, the team's top playoff goal scorer last spring, so he could keep his defense intact.