Speed Limit Helps Ducks Park Canucks

VANCOUVER — Speed thrills, but it also kills.

The Mighty Ducks beat Vancouver, 3-2, Sunday at GM Place by not succumbing to the temptation that dangles so tantalizingly in every game against the Canucks.

Instead of the pell-mell, up-and-down game by which they so often have been burned, the Ducks played tighter hockey, controlling the game and limiting Vancouver to 23 shots.

By doing that, the Ducks held the high-test tandem of Pavel Bure and Alexander Mogilny without a point, which goes a long way toward beating the Canucks.

“That’s been pretty tough for us in the past,” Coach Ron Wilson said. If it wasn’t clear that this game hinged on speed, consider the nicknames. It was Pavel Bure, the Russian Rocket, against Teemu Selanne, the Finnish Flash.

Selanne and Paul Kariya, the Ducks’ other skater with blazing speed, won with each scoring a goal.

Selanne scored his 25th of the season and tied a Duck record by scoring a goal for a fifth consecutive game. Kariya’s goal, his 16th, was the game-winner, coming on a power play at 10:12 of the second period. It gives him four goals in the last two games after his first hat trick Friday against Buffalo.

Linemate Steve Rucchin assisted on both goals, and has seven points over the last three games.

Quite often, Bure and Mogilny and Selanne and Kariya were on the ice at the same time.

“We know that when that happens, if we are patient and play smart defensively, we’ll get our chances, because they want goals too,” Selanne said. “Some guys, like Bure, they don’t really want to backcheck,” he said with a sly smile, because he is sometimes one of those guys. “You know you can get chances, three-on-two, two-on-one.”

Only last Monday, Vancouver beat the Ducks, 5-1, in Anaheim. Bure had two goals in that game, including an embarrassing two-on-none shorthanded score that he laughed wildly about on the ice.

The Ducks didn’t hang goalie Guy Hebert out to dry like that this time.

“This is definitely a nice little payback. We didn’t play very well that game,” Hebert said. “The last two games, I haven’t faced that many shots. Guys are blocking shots, and we’re spending more time in our opponents’ zone, which means there’s less time in our own end.”

Hebert held off the Canucks the entire third period, including a close call when he stopped Martin Gelinas’ rebound on the goal line, and a lucky break when Donald Brashear missed wide from close range.

But always, the Ducks were aware of Bure and Mogilny.

“We didn’t want to let them get in behind us,” defenseman Dave Karpa said. “I think [Vancouver] only got one breakaway, against our power play. Last game, they got, two, three, four, I don’t know how many breakaways. . . . Before this game, we talked about how we just really wanted to control things, always have a third guy high.”

The score was tied, 1-1, early in the second after goals by the Ducks’ Brian Bellows--a power-play goal--and Vancouver’s Mark Wotton on a shot that deflected in off the Ducks’ Jason Marshall.

Selanne regained the lead for the Ducks at 6:51 of the second, but a little more than two minutes later the score was tied again after Kariya tried a long pass in the neutral zone with the Ducks on a power play.

Leif Rohlin intercepted the puck and sent Mike Sillinger in on a short-handed breakaway. Sillinger, a former Duck, put the puck in the top of the net for his 10th goal of the season and his second against his former team in less than a week.

Kariya made amends, though, when he scored the game-winner, putting a rebound past Kirk McLean from the corner of the net, his new spot down low on the power play.

“We played well defensively,” Kariya said. “I just think we played a smarter game.”

With only a game at Calgary on Wednesday between now and the All-Star break, the team is headed for Banff in the Canadian Rockies today for a couple of days of “bonding” and practice. With the victory over the Canucks, the Ducks are two points behind Vancouver for the final Western Conference playoff spot.

“That’s a big one, a four-pointer at Calgary,” Hebert said. “Maybe we can go into the All-Star break in a playoff spot.”