Ducks End Skid--Beat Coyotes

If the regular season ended now, the Anaheim Mighty Ducks would face the Phoenix Coyotes in the opening round of the playoffs for the second time in three years. And that would suit both teams just fine.

Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne each scored and Guy Hebert earned his 22nd career shutout Sunday as the Ducks ended a three-game losing streak with a 3-0 victory, which put them back into fifth place in the Western Conference standings.

"I think we have a much better team than we had then," Selanne said about the 1997 Ducks team that won in seven games. "We had a good team that year, too, but we have even more depth this year. Phoenix has a better team, too, so it's not going to be easy."

Phoenix needs one more victory in its remaining three games to clinch fourth place in the Western Conference and home ice advantage in the opening round. But two of those games are against Dallas, which already has clinched the NHL's best record.

"There always has to be some urgency when you're approaching the playoffs," Coyotes center Jeremy Roenick said. "But it's not like we had to win this game. It wasn't a do-or-die situation, but we do want to try to get into a playoff mode as fast as we can because you can't just turn it on."

The Ducks are in the same situation as Phoenix. Sunday's victory was their first in five games since clinching a playoff berth on Apr. 2.

"Wins are great and we're certainly not going to turn them down, but it's more important that we're playing well because that's what it's going to take to survive in the playoffs," left wing Jim McKenzie said.

Hebert recorded his sixth shutout of the season with 40 saves, handing the Coyotes their third consecutive loss and third shutout in their last six games.

The Phoenix power play, 26th in the league, came up empty on all six opportunities and has scored only twice in its last 37 attmpts with the man advantage.

Kariya scored his 37th goal at 3:21 of the first period when he took the puck away from defenseman Stan Necklar near the right boards and beat Nikolai Khabibulin from a few feet away. It was his 16th goal in 18 career games against the Coyotes.

Jeff Nielsen got his fifth goal of the season with 8:08 remaining, as he converted McKenzie's backhanded pass from behind the net and flipped the puck over Khabibulin's glove.

Selanne got his league-leading 46th goal, an empty-netter, with 48 seconds to play.

Phoenix wing Keith Tkachuk had a goal disallowed five minutes into the second period, after replays showed he was in the crease when he redirected Roenick's centering pass from the left boards past Hebert.

Anaheim only lost one of the six games in the season series and held Tkachuk to just one goal in the six games, after surrendering seven by the Coyotes' captain in their four meetings last season.

"Just because they beat us in the season series, it doesn't mean that we don't feel good about playing them," Roenick said. "We've had some close games and some battles, and I think we match up very well against each other."

Kariya, who has played in all 79 games for the Ducks after missing the final 21 last season because of a concussion, took three shots to increase his season total to 414. That tied Bobby Hull's total in 1968-69 and left Phil Esposito as the only player who has taken more shots in one season than Kariya. Esposito had 550 in 1970-71.

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