Ducks overcome scary moments

Their legs were leaden and their sparkplug was missing after James Wisniewski took a puck to the chest and was taken to a hospital for precautionary tests, but the Ducks held on to defeat the Detroit Red Wings, 2-1, Tuesday at the Honda Center and took a 2-1 lead in the teams’ second-round playoff series.

An apparent tying goal for Detroit was waved off by referee Brad Watson with 1:04 to play. Much to the dismay of the Red Wings’ bench, Watson ruled that the whistle had blown before Marian Hossa poked the puck over the goal line.

“It was a little lucky for us,” goalie Jonas Hiller said, “but you have to fight to be lucky, and everyone in here fought.”

The teams pushed and shoved at the whistle, the spillover of the tension of a close and punishing game. Hiller stopped 45 shots, again stellar against a potent Red Wings barrage.

Game 4 will be played Thursday, also at the Honda Center.

Wisniewski, whose physical play and outgoing personality have revived the Ducks since they acquired him from Chicago just before the trade deadline, was taken to UCI Medical Center in Irvine for precautionary reasons after he was struck in the chest by a shot in the second period.

He appeared wobbly after the shot by Pavel Datsyuk struck him, but he got back into the play. A few seconds later he was elbowed in the head by Tomas Holmstrom and quickly sank to the ice on all fours, clearly in distress.

Medical personnel quickly came to his aid and put him onto a gurney. He sat up, which the crowd took as an encouraging sign, but he was grimacing as he was taken off for further examination and treatment.

That triggered memories of a frightening moment that occurred during the 1998 playoffs, when Chris Pronger -- then with St. Louis -- was struck in the chest by a puck during a game against Detroit and suffered an incident of heart arrhythmia. Pronger returned a few days later, and the Ducks were left to hope that Wisniewski had also avoided anything more serious than a scare.

“It’s a scary situation, having gone through it,” Pronger said. “You could see he was hurt and trying to catch his breath.”

The Ducks had built a 2-0 lead on goals by Teemu Selanne and Scott Niedermayer, before Henrik Zetterberg cut that to 2-1 at 14:20 of the second period.

The Ducks’ first goal stemmed from a lost faceoff, oddly enough.

Andrew Ebbett lost a draw against Valtteri Filppula in the Ducks’ zone, and the puck slid back to Brett Lebda. However, Lebda’s pass/shot was tipped and ended up on the stick of Ryan Carter, who saw Selanne streaking up the middle.

Still worthy of his nickname the “Finnish Flash” as he approaches his 39th birthday, Selanne closed in on Chris Osgood and withstood a slash from Chris Chelios before slicing a backhander past Osgood at 12:49.

The Ducks took advantage of a debatable interference call against Detroit’s Brad Stuart at 7:36 to build a 2-0 lead, the first time in the series either team had led by more than one goal.

Stuart crunched Drew Miller into the glass behind Detroit’s net, a hard hit but one on which he didn’t leave his feet or use an elbow. But Stuart was sent off and the Ducks capitalized off a scramble that began when Scott Niedermayer took a shot from about 30 feet. The puck bounced around in front before Niedermayer tipped in his own rebound.

That lead didn’t last long. But worse for the Ducks than losing their two-goal cushion was losing Wisniewski, who was carried off on a gurney at 13:49, with a delayed penalty pending against the Ducks.

“Any time a guy stays down and is carried off on a stretcher you get scared,” Carter said. “We’re thinking about him and hoping he’s all right.

“He will be all right. He’s a warrior.”

When play resumed, Scott Niedermayer went to the penalty box for hooking Holmstrom and the Red Wings scored to cut the Ducks’ lead to 2-1.

Jiri Hudler made a fine pass to Mikael Samuelsson, whose one-timer hit a body in front and bounced to Zetterberg by the left post. Zetterberg prodded the puck into the net for his team-leading fourth playoff goal.

The Ducks, short a defenseman after Wisniewski’s injury, made things difficult for themselves by taking two penalties after the midway point of the third period.

Ebbett was penalized for high sticking at 10:25 and the Red Wings took three shots but couldn’t beat Hiller.

Miller took a bad holding penalty in the neutral zone at 14:27 to give the Red Wings another chance to swarm all over the Ducks, but Hiller was up to the titanic task.

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helene.elliott@latimes.com