Ducks’ Late Flurry Not Enough in Loss

Watching the Mighty Ducks on Sunday at the Arrowhead Pond, you got the feeling that all they needed was one big break against the Boston Bruins.

Or one good shift.

Or one good period.

Never happened.

The Ducks got next to nothing accomplished until it was too late in a 3-2 loss to the Bruins before an announced crowd of 14,712. In the end, the Ducks were outworked and worked over by a team with a good deal more pluck than skill.

Oh, the Bruins have a speedy little winger named Sergei Samsonov, who is capable of making defenses look bad, as he did on a first-period goal Sunday.

Boston also has a future Hall of Famer in defenseman Ray Bourque.

But name another Bruin and you win a prize.

Still, the no-names whipped the big-names from Anaheim until deep into the third period. It wasn’t even close for about 50 minutes.

Samsonov and Dave Andreychuk scored for Boston in the first period. Steve Heinze added a power-play goal in the second and somebody named Robbie Tallas stopped the Ducks cold until center Matt Cullen’s goal at 12:06 of the third.

Duck defenseman Oleg Tverdovsky made things a bit more interesting by scoring while goalie Guy Hebert was on the bench in favor of a sixth skater with 1:12 left.

But the rally ended there.

“We cheated,” captain Paul Kariya said flatly at game’s end. “We didn’t do the little things. If we had, by the third period, we could have taken over this game.”

Coach Craig Hartsburg warned the Ducks what might happen if they came out flat after going 2-2-1-1 on their just-completed trip to New Jersey, Tampa Bay, Florida, Washington and Chicago.

Boston didn’t exactly have the Ducks quaking in their skates, having won its first game Saturday night by 3-1 over the San Jose Sharks.

Underestimating the Bruins might also have played a part in the Ducks’ lifeless start, although Kariya insisted that was not the case. A day of rest Friday and a good practice Saturday should have had the Ducks ready.

“We knew exactly what was going to happen in this game,” Kariya said. “A good team would have done things differently. But we’re not to that level yet. Sooner or later, we’ll learn it.”

The Ducks should have played a patient game while waiting for the road-weary Bruins, who were playing the final game of a six-game trip, to weaken.

Instead, the Ducks chucked their aggressive forecheck in favor of a free-wheeling style that caused more problems than it solved. The biggest boo-boos of the first period led to goals and a 2-0 deficit.

First, no one in a Duck uniform saw fit to put a body on Samsonov, who dashed and darted through the defense and delivered a laser beam over Hebert’s left shoulder at 3:48.

Next, right wing Teemu Selanne attempted to clear a puck from his zone by sending it up the middle of the ice.

The Bruins picked off Selanne’s pass. The puck then wound up on the stick of Andreychuk and he whistled a quick shot from the slot past Hebert at 16:29.

Heinze’s second-period goal at 13:21 proved to be pivotal, but only after the Ducks awoke from their slumber in the third. The Ducks hardly looked like the same team in the third, but a three-goal deficit was too much to make up in only 20 minutes.