Ducks rout the Sharks, 5-0

All the Ducks needed was someone to make them pay attention.

After some decidedly mixed efforts against a succession of losing teams on their five-game homestand, the Ducks turned their first matchup with the San Jose Sharks into a dominating 5-0 victory Tuesday night in front of an announced 15,013 at the Honda Center.

The Ducks (15-2-5) extended their lead in the Pacific Division to five points over the Sharks in a divisional battle that figures to play out all season. The decisive win also purged the memory of consecutive losses to Philadelphia and Chicago along with a less-than-impressive effort against Phoenix.

“We knew coming into this game that we hadn’t been playing our best hockey,” defenseman Chris Pronger said. “Certainly, that’s a very good team on the other side. We needed to be ready to play or they were going to embarrass us.”

Jean-Sebastien Giguere made 23 saves for his third shutout and Teemu Selanne had two goals to move within one of 500.

Pronger also had a goal and an assist, Ryan Getzlaf and Francois Beauchemin added power-play goals and rookie defenseman Shane O’Brien had two assists. Pronger also figured prominently in a critical penalty kill in the second period that changed the game.

Ducks Coach Randy Carlyle called it their most complete performance of the season.

“We did a lot of things that we’re trying to make staples of our play,” Carlyle said. “A lot of things went our way and we worked hard.”

The Ducks also shut down the trio of Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau and Milan Michalek, who’ve already accounted for 70 points.

San Jose only managed to stay in the game because goaltender Evgeni Nabokov made several acrobatic stops among his 39 saves.

“He did everything he could,” Sharks Coach Ron Wilson said of his goalie. “It just didn’t seem to look like we could find a rallying point. That’s the disappointing part.”

It was midway through the second period that the Ducks’ efforts really shone.

Scott Niedermayer and Todd Marchant took penalties 22 seconds apart to put the Ducks in a two-man hole for 1 minute, 28 seconds.

Seconds later, Marleau hit the crossbar. Near the end of the power play, Steve Bernier had a wide-open net but couldn’t get his stick on Michalek’s pass across the slot.

That was as close as they got to scoring. Carlyle called it a “major league kill.”

The Ducks seized the momentum.

Beauchemin zipped a one-timer toward the net that hit the Sharks’ Marc-Edouard Vlasic but Getzlaf jumped on the loose puck and banged it in for his first goal in six games and eighth goal of the season.

The Ducks put the game on ice in the third when Andy McDonald blew past rookie defenseman Matt Carle and fed a nice pass from behind the net to a crashing Selanne, who easily put the puck past Nabokov.

Selanne, who has 19 points in his last 11 games, later added his 499th goal to pass Peter Bondra for fourth all-time among European players.

“Our line is really playing with confidence right now,” he said.

“We had a little slow start. It’s all about confidence and it’s working really well right now.”