Ducks, Kariya Get Big Dose of Reality

This was a return to the salt mine, not Salt Lake City, for Paul Kariya.

Olympic memories were officially filed away. Memories of poor performances were dusted off in a 5-3 loss to Minnesota Wednesday night at the Arrowhead Pond, as the Wild tested the Ducks’ mettle instead of being awed by their medals.

So the Ducks’ first post-Olympic game had a post-mortem feel to it.

In a morning news conference, Kariya put the finishing touches on an Olympic masterpiece by Team Canada. He was ready to put it all in the scrapbook and move on.

“When you got the gold medal around your neck and you’re listening to the [Canadian] national anthem, it’s almost like surreal,” Kariya said. “I couldn’t feel my body, there was so much emotion and at the same time numbness.

“The only thing left is the Stanley Cup. That is all there is in my sights right now. That would finish it off.”

It took Canada a half century to win a gold medal. The Ducks have that kind of pace going, as Wednesday’s effort demonstrated. But Kariya was back on the job.

“The last couple days, I have been on the phone a lot, a lot of congratulations, stuff like that,” Kariya said. “After this [news conference] is over today, it will be pretty easy to get back my focus on the season.”

There was some Olympic magic left. Kariya had two goals and Oleg Tverdovsky two assists, but their efforts were wasted. Jason Marshall, Nick Schultz, Brad Bombardir and Matt Johnson scored goals, as the Wild took a commanding lead then held off the Ducks in the final 10 minutes.

Before the game, the Ducks welcomed home their three Olympians, Kariya, who won the gold medal, Tverdovsky, who won the bronze with Russia, and Ruslan Salei, who played for Belarus. They also welcomed back center Steve Rucchin, who had missed 44 games with an injured ankle.

“It’s one thing when you play for your team and you play for an organization,” Kariya said. “But it’s another thing when you play for everyone from Saskatchewan to Nova Scotia.”

Now he’s back with the organization that has trouble keeping folk from La Habra to San Clemente interested as the announced crowd of 10,022 in the more-than-half-empty Pond showed.

But, then, there was little worth watching until the final 10 minutes. The Ducks didn’t have a shot on goal in the game’s first seven minutes and went nearly 12 minutes without one in the second period.

The Ducks pressured the Wild after Samuel Pahlsson’s goal cut the Wild lead to 4-3 with nine minutes left. But they couldn’t overcome their early doldrums.

Marshall, a former Duck, fired in a blue-line shot, his first goal against his former home, in the first period goal to put the Wild in motion. By the time the game was over, the Ducks had been rolled over by a team they hope to pass in the standings.

“For the balance of the season, we’d like to play hard and well, and I think we will,” Coach Bryan Murray said. “We know our schedule is such that we have to play well to be competitive in every game.”

The Ducks, who had won seven of nine games before the Olympic break, play 16 teams in their final 21 games and 13 have winning records at the moment. Minnesota was one of the three sub-.500 teams.

Duck goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere couldn’t handle a Marshall shot that wasn’t going to tax any speed gun. Goals by Schultz and Bombardir--his first goal in 104 games with the Wild--put the Ducks in a 3-0 hole 11 minutes into the second period.

The Ducks played the third period without Andy McDonald, who suffered a head injury and was evaluated after the game.