Ducks stay in charge of Wild

ST. PAUL, MINN. —  Many of the faces have changed in the four years since the last playoff series between the Ducks and the Minnesota Wild, but the reality is that nothing has changed.

When it comes to the postseason, the Ducks seem to own the Wild, and they’re on the verge of digging the broom out of the closet.

Looking as if they’re bunkered in for the long haul, the Ducks stuck to their plan of suffocating defense and a productive power play in a 2-1 victory Sunday night in Game 3 at Xcel Energy Center that has Minnesota on the verge of elimination in this first-round Western Conference series.

The Ducks are up, 3-0, in a series many thought would be much closer. Game 4 is Tuesday night in Minnesota.

“I wouldn’t say the series is over,” Ducks center Andy McDonald said. “They’ve got a good hockey team over there. We’ve got to win four. We’ve only won three. I think it’s going to be the toughest one yet for us.”

It may well be. But nothing in the three games has given any indication that the Wild is nothing more than the hard-working yet overmatched foe it was in the 2003 conference finals when the Ducks gave up one goal in a four-game sweep.

All three games in this series have been decided by one goal, but only Game 1 was in serious doubt when the third period arrived. The Ducks’ only deficit was in the opener, when they trailed for 3 minutes 51 seconds of the second period.

“There’s a long way from a one-goal loss to a one-goal win,” Minnesota goaltender Niklas Backstrom said. “We have to get those things on our side.”

Backstrom, who made 17 saves, has been strong in keeping the Wild close in each game. The Ducks have simply been better.

McDonald gave the Ducks a 1-0 lead when he and Chris Pronger teamed on a redirection play in the first period for the Ducks’ third power-play goal in the series.

“I just went to the net and Prongs made a real smart play by shooting it,” said McDonald, who was at the right of Backstrom. “We caught the goalie out of position.”

Pronger said there was some space when two defenders chased the puck along the boards.

“The puck was just coming back and it was rolling,” he said. “I kind of saw him going towards the net. I was just trying to get it back to Mac, knowing we had a two-on-one situation.”

The Ducks then put the game in lockdown mode. They held star forward Marian Gaborik and leading scorer Pavol Demitra without a shot while killing four more penalties.

If it wasn’t Pronger or Scott Niedermayer on them, it was the checking line of Samuel Pahlsson, Rob Niedermayer and Travis Moen that was on top of Gaborik and Demitra all night.

And when the Wild did threaten, Ilya Bryzgalov was there to stop them with 19 saves, including bang-bang stops on Mikko Koivu and Branko Radivojevic in the second period.

“Once we scored the first goal, it relieved a lot of pressure off of us from that standpoint that we go into our groove and played more of a tighter hockey game,” Ducks Coach Randy Carlyle said. “I think it was as strong a defensive effort as we’ve had so far. Our goaltender made some stops when we were lax in a couple of areas.”

Rob Niedermayer added the finishing touch when he slipped a wrist shot past Backstrom at 9:43 of the third for his first goal since Feb. 6 at San Jose. Minnesota’s Petteri Nummelin scored on a six-on-four advantage with 39 seconds left, ending the Ducks’ penalty-killing streak at 36 minutes.

A year ago, the Ducks rallied from three deficits in the first round to win a seven-game series against Calgary. Now in the role of a heavy favorite, they have four chances to close the Wild out.

“It was a big game,” Ducks captain Scott Niedermayer said. “We obviously did what we wanted to at home. Coming on the road, we knew it’d be a big challenge. We had to come out here and play as well as we could. For the most part, we did that.”

eric.stephens@latimes.com