Ducks come up a little bit short

FROM DETROIT — One goal short.

That will prey on the Ducks' minds, that they had come back from oblivion in March and rallied twice against Detroit on Thursday but fell one goal short of advancing to the Western Conference finals.

The Red Wings' pervasive grit, maybe more than their dazzling skill, was the difference in a 4-3 victory that decided a riveting seven-game series between the last two Stanley Cup champions. The Ducks' resilience, though admirable, could not compensate for that.

Detroit will move on to face the Chicago Blackhawks because Dan Cleary, finishing a play that developed after the Ducks didn't get the puck in deep at the other end, batted a pass from Henrik Zetterberg out of mid-air and beneath goaltender Jonas Hiller with three minutes left in the third period. It was the trump card the Ducks could not match.

"We deserved a better end," Teemu Selanne said. Instead they got a bitter end.

Maybe the end to the brilliant career of Scott Niedermayer, too. The backbone of the Ducks' defense can become an unrestricted free agent July 1; he retired briefly after their 2007 Cup championship and could do so -- for good -- this summer.

"It's possible but I haven't thought about it much. And I will now," Niedermayer said. "We've had a lot of fun here the last few months playing. The team's played well. It's been fun to be here. I'll figure it out now."

He will have the time now, even though the Ducks held MVP finalist Pavel Datsyuk to no goals, held Tomas Holmstrom to no points and scored at least one power-play goal in each game of this second-round series.

They lost because the buoyancy they developed after a series of late-season trades turned their season around was not enough to make up for their lack of a productive second line and those oh-so-vexing lapses in discipline.

"We really jelled as a team and became pretty close and probably had as good a chance as anyone to go all the way," said defenseman Ryan Whitney, who improved the Ducks' transition game and enlivened their locker room after his Feb. 26 arrival from Pittsburgh.

"It's a game of inches. That last goal was kind of flukey and it just wasn't meant to be for us."

For a while, it seemed the Ducks might follow their upset of the top-seeded San Jose Sharks with a dismissal of the defending champion Red Wings. After falling behind, 3-1, the Ducks pulled even at 7:37 of the third period on Bobby Ryan's first goal in nine games, causing the crowd at Joe Louis Arena to murmur in concern.