Kevin Bieksa and new friends, the Ducks, take on his old team, Vancouver

Newly minted Ducks defenseman Kevin Bieksa was musing about shifting alliances, rivalries redefined with one phone call, one trade between general managers.

“The hockey world is a weird world,” Bieksa said Sunday. “You have guys you’ve battled with over the years. As soon as you get on the team and have a couple of conversations, you figure out they’re just like you. You hated them all those years for no reason. Now you quickly become friends.”

In other words, he is getting along quite well with new teammate and Ducks forward and agitator Corey Perry, once a formidable foe. Perry called Bieksa “a leader,” and said those qualities trickle down to the rest of the lineup. Bieksa played 24-plus minutes in the opener, trailing only Hampus Lindholm (25 minutes 16 seconds).

“It’s better when he’s on your team than going up and getting punched in the face 100 times in a game when he’s on the other team,” Perry said. “He’s a battler, a competitor, and goes out there and wants to win, and you can see it.”

On Monday night, Bieksa will face his former teammates, the Vancouver Canucks, at Honda Center in the Ducks’ home opener. He was dealt to Anaheim by the Canucks for a second-round pick in 2016 and had played 597 regular-season games with Vancouver.

The Ducks will try to avoid starting 0-2, having lost their season opener Saturday night. San Jose beat the visiting Ducks, 2-0, sparked by Patrick Marleau’s two goals and goalie Martin Jones, who made 27 saves for his eighth career shutout. His first seven career shutouts came in his days with the Kings.

“It’s Game 1. It’s a new group,” said Ducks center Ryan Kesler, who was also a longtime fixture in Vancouver before coming to Anaheim last season.

“We’ve got to create our own identity. We can’t say we had the same identity last year because it’s not the same team. We’ve got to get used to our linemates, like we have been.

“Just stick to it. We’ve got 81 more games. It’s not the end of the world that we lost Game 1. We lost Game 1 last year and we looked way worse last year than we did this year. I’ve got faith in these guys.”

The game featured a fine goaltending duel between Jones and the Ducks’ Frederik Andersen, who faced 44 shots. Perry hit the post before the game was five minutes old, and the Ducks were spotty. They started well, but Ducks Coach Bruce Boudreau noted that they didn’t have their usual pushback in the third period.

“I think there were spots in the game where we played pretty well,” Boudreau said. “But to win against a good team, you have to play good for 60 minutes, not 30 minutes or any other time frame.”

Boudreau split up Perry and captain Ryan Getzlaf for most of the opener — they were again on separate lines at Sunday’s practice — and put them together for the last 10 minutes of the game Saturday.

Perry, who was with Jiri Sekac and Rickard Rakell in the opener, is expecting to see more time off Getzlaf’s line than on it

“I firmly believe that it’s going to last for a while,” Perry said. “I’m going to be out there with him the odd time. It’s going to be at any point in the game. It could be the first shift of the game [with him] and [then] back to the lines.

“…Obviously, if nobody is producing, the lines are going to get mixed up. You’ve seen it. We’ve all seen it. If we’re not winning, if we’re not scoring, if things in a game aren’t going the right way, he [Boudreau] is going to juggle the lines. As he should.”

lisa.dillman@latimes.com

Twitter: @reallisa