Ducks Try Everything, but Can’t Put One Past Oilers’ Ranford : Hockey: Edmonton goalie is too much in 2-0 victory, the first shutout of Anaheim this season.

The Mighty Ducks got stopped cold by the Edmonton Oilers on Wednesday, just like all 31 of their shots. Point-blank, breakaway, nearly open net, it didn’t matter. Goaltender Bill Ranford stopped everything he saw in a 2-0 shutout, the first against the Ducks this season.

When it was over, Duck Coach Ron Wilson didn’t simply tip his hat, he shook Ranford’s hand.

“He just said to me, ‘You stood on your head,’ ” Ranford said. “He’s a classy guy. I’ve gone against him in international play, the minors and the pros and you have to respect a guy like that.”

Wilson called Ranford’s performance perhaps the best ever against his team.

“It’s frustrating to lose and go back under .500 [11-12], but sometimes you’ve got to give credit where it’s due,” Wilson said. “Billy Ranford, holy smokes.”

The shutout was Ranford’s first of the season and 11th of his career. He stopped center Mike Sillinger four times, most of them on point-blank shots, and defenseman Oleg Tverdovsky on five, several of them in the slot.

“He was great,” Sillinger said. “He stopped everything.”

Ranford’s best came with less than five minutes left, when he stopped a puck off Paul Kariya’s stick with the tip of his skate, went down, and somehow still got his glove on Sillinger’s rebound as he fell back.

“That one was just unbelievable,” said Sillinger, who skated away with his eyes to the rafters. “I got it upstairs, and he still gets it. I thought it was as good as in. We score there and we’re back in the game. He was sitting down on the other side of the net and I put it pretty high. I think that was the best save anybody’s ever made on me.”

There weren’t many fans on hand to appreciate Ranford’s performance--the crowd was announced at 9,052, the smallest in Oiler history. It broke the record of 9,384 set the previous game against Colorado.

The Oilers are better than their record indicates--they had won only one of their last 10 games--and the Ducks can’t expect to sustain the pace that had given them nine victories in their previous 12.

Edmonton got the only goal it needed 3:09 into the game when Kirk Maltby went around Duck defenseman Randy Ladouceur and unleashed a shot from the right circle that beat Mikhail Shtalenkov cleanly.

Shtalenkov, playing for only the second time in the last 14 games, was sharp. He made 25 saves and gave up only Maltby’s goal and another by David Oliver at 7:14 of the third, when Oliver redirected Jiri Slegr’s shot.

Ranford and the Oilers stopped the Ducks on a five-on-three power play in the first period during an unbroken stretch of 4:32 with at least a man advantage after Jason Arnott got a double-minor for high-sticking.

Bob Corkum bore down on Ranford on a breakaway in the second, but didn’t get much on the shot. Ranford saved that, then kicked away a shot by Garry Valk and stopped Bobby Dollas on the same sequence.

He stopped another flurry early in the third, turning away Tverdovsky and Sillinger in close with the lead still only 1-0.

“He was just quicker than hell tonight,” Wilson said.

Duck Notes

Defenseman Milos Holan is tired of being left out of the lineup even though doctors have cleared him to play. “I haven’t played for a whole month,” said Holan, who has a slow-progressing form of leukemia but has no symptoms other than an elevated white blood cell count, which is controlled by medication. “Maybe they still worry about me,” he said. “[But] if I don’t ever play, I can’t try to prove I can play.” Holan, 24, played two games after announcing his condition Oct. 22 but has been scratched the last 13 while the Ducks have gone 9-4. Coach Ron Wilson has said Holan isn’t playing because the current lineup has been hot, but he hasn’t put him in after losses and has said Holan “hasn’t been the same” since the diagnosis. “If they want to see something, they will,” said Holan, who won the Ducks’ competition for hardest shot and most accurate earlier this month. “Ron told me in training camp I was the best defenseman, or one of the best defensemen, on the team. I don’t know what he’s waiting for.” Holan said if he doesn’t start playing in the next month, he might consider treatment with interferon, a drug that has had promising results in some patients. Holan would continue to await a bone marrow transplant, but said treatment with interferon probably would make him feel too ill to play. “If I don’t ever play, I might try [interferon]” he said. “I hope I will play.”