Wings

The progress made by Ducks rookie wing Emerson Etem adds an intriguing dynamic to the team pushing to finish with the Western Conference's best record. "Youthful energy is tremendous in the dog days," Ducks Coach Bruce Boudreau said. "It's really meaningful. We have guys getting up there who don't have the same energy. When they see the young guys doing it, it catches on. No team's going to survive without young guys. " Long Beach's Etem, 20, didn't make the Ducks' roster after training camp.

The Detroit Red Wings expected life would be complicated after the retirement of incomparable defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom and pesky forward Tomas Holmstrom. But they didn't expect a steady stream of injuries would constantly test them and force them to rely heavily on rookies this season. "We're probably right about where we thought we'd be, but we thought we'd have a way different team," Coach Mike Babcock said. "We knew it was going to be scratch and claw for us this year, just with our back end. " But scratch and claw they have, sweeping two statement games from the Ducks in Anaheim on Friday and Sunday.

What the Detroit Red Wings accomplished by ending the Ducks' 13-game home winning streak is a weekend debate. Was a formula established to beat the team that two nights earlier had pronounced itself the Western Conference power? Or was it simply an aberration that can be quickly corrected? The answer should arrive Sunday at 5 p.m., when the teams meet again at Honda Center. "We'll practice, look in the video room, make some adjustments and come back a lot better," Ducks Coach Bruce Boudreau said.

The Ducks are too proud to admit it, but upon their ultimate arrival in the NHL playoffs, they'd rather not find the Detroit Red Wings waiting. For the second consecutive game at Honda Center, Detroit beat the Ducks. On Sunday night, it was 2-1, with Red Wings goaltender Jimmy Howard turning in a second consecutive 33-save effort to deal Anaheim its first two-game losing streak of the season in regulation. After the Ducks had won 13 straight at home. "We had chances left and right, but they made some saves," Ducks center Andrew Cogliano said.

All that has defined the Ducks' season wasn't happening Friday night. The home dominance. The knack for comebacks. The impenetrable goaltending. The Detroit Red Wings, riding a hat trick by left wing Justin Abdelkader that matched his previous season goal total, ended the Ducks' franchise-record 13-game winning streak at Honda Center with a 5-1 victory. Caught in a flat-footed performance that was ripe with the feeling they let down after beating Western Conference leader Chicago only two nights earlier, the Ducks (22-4-4)

On the eve of two home games in three nights against the rival Detroit Red Wings, the Ducks on Thursday secured big-bodied left wing Patrick Maroon with a two-year, $1.15-million contract extension. Maroon, 24, has two goals in 11 games this season with the Ducks after scoring 17 goals in 51 games at minor league Norfolk (Va.). The 6-foot-3, 230-pound player has impressed by complementing his brawn (10 penalty minutes) with graceful puck handling and an eye for the net. He scored his first goal Feb. 16 against Nashville's Pekka Rinne and tied the score in an eventual 2-1 win at Minnesota on March 12. Dentist appointment While others around him skated into position in the final minutes of Wednesday's 4-2 victory over the Chicago Blackhawks, Ducks center Andrew Cogliano had fallen to the ice, holding his mouth.

If you're a bird that likes to build mud nests in dangerous places, such as highway bridges and overpasses, how do you avoid fatal encounters with cars and trucks? You quickly get out of their way. And it helps if you have shorter wings, which allow for a more vertical takeoff. A paper published March 18 in the journal Current Biology suggests that the wingspan of cliff swallows in a Nebraska study has shortened as an evolutionary response to the hazards of highway dwelling. The number of road-killed swallows dropped sharply over a 30-year period at the same time as the average wing length in the swallow population showed a long-term decline, according to the research.

The Ducks had two giant reasons to celebrate Monday, as they won their franchise-record 12th consecutive game at Honda Center and locked up star wing Corey Perry in an eight-year extension. "Everybody got all excited," Ducks defenseman Francois Beauchemin said of learning in the first intermission Perry had struck a $69-million deal to remain in Anaheim. "Staying in Anaheim has always been my first choice," Perry said in a prepared statement. "This is a great place to play, and I'm very grateful to have the opportunity to remain here.

When veteran filmmaker Roland Emmerich was first offered the chance to direct a movie about terrorists taking over the White House, he couldn't believe his luck. "It's such a good idea," Emmerich, the money-minting director of movies such as "2012," said last week at a Culver City editing facility, where he has been holed up polishing his new film, "White House Down. " "I was surprised no one had done it before. " It turns out someone has. Just before. Emmerich's movie, about a wannabe Secret Service agent with a Messiah complex who serendipitously ends up at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. during a fiery terrorist attack, will come out June 28. That's barely three months after the release Friday of Antoine Fuqua's "Olympus Has Fallen" - about a wannabe Secret Service agent with a Messiah complex who serendipitously ends up at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. during a fiery terrorist attack.

Some of the earliest birds hailing from the age of the dinosaurs may have sported four flying limbs, a team of Chinese researchers says. If so, 11 fossils from the lower Cretaceous period, about 120 million years ago, could represent a missing link in the development of modern birds, according to a new paper released Thursday by the journal Science. Modern birds generally work with two wings, using small, clawed hind legs for ground travel. A few, like the golden eagle, have fuzzy down on their back limbs, which is for insulating their appendages, not flying.