Ducks are left feeling the Blues

After Keith Tkachuk’s slap shot zoomed by Ilya Bryzgalov’s glove before settling into the net, the goalie took a look at the glove in bewilderment.

Moments later, Bryzgalov slowly skated off the ice. The rest of the Ducks may as well have followed.

There haven’t been many nights in the last two seasons when the Ducks have been worked over, but Tuesday night was one of them as the St. Louis Blues dealt them a 6-2 defeat at the Honda Center.

The Ducks (30-10-8) may still have an NHL-best 68 points, but they looked nothing like the team that dominated the first 2 1/2 months of the season.

“You look at our group as a collective whole, we didn’t have anybody going tonight,” center Todd Marchant said. “As a result, the St. Louis Blues basically took over a 60-minute hockey game in our own building.

“This is probably the first game in a really long time where we got outworked for an extended period of time. And that’s unacceptable, especially at this time of the year.”

The Ducks have lost seven of nine since goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere went down with a groin injury. Chris Pronger and Francois Beauchemin, two of their top four defensemen, went down with separate injuries in a six-day span in late December.

None of them are expected to return until after the All-Star break, at the earliest. As they face consecutive games at Edmonton and Calgary, the Ducks are looking at possibly being overtaken by Nashville in the Western Conference.

Or worse. San Jose is within six points of the Pacific Division lead and closing fast.

“We’re not happy,” Scott Niedermayer said. “It’s been a couple of weeks where we’ve been up and down and gotten away from what we need to do as a team.”

The Blues looked like the fresher team even after losing in a shootout 24 hours earlier at Phoenix. Six players scored goals, two of which where the first short-handed tallies the Ducks have given up this season, as the Blues reveled in the good scoring chances handed to them.

Eric Brewer was left alone to bang in Petr Cajanek’s pass for a power-play goal in the first period. Cajanek and Doug Weight then finished two-on-one breaks to start a four-goal onslaught in the second period.

The easy win gave Coach Andy Murray a victory in his first Southern California appearance since being fired by the Kings in March.

“We were opportunistic tonight and caught them on not one of their better nights,” Murray said.

Midway through the second period, Tkachuk’s shot from the point skipped off Bryzgalov’s glove. It spelled the end of the game for the second-year backup goalie, who stopped only nine of 13 shots.

Bryzgalov has won consecutive games only once this season and is 2-3-2 with a 3.04 goals-against average in seven starts since returning after a groin injury.

“You look at the goals tonight,” Marchant said. “There’s not a lot he could have done. We gave up odd-man rushes. We gave up two on ones. We gave up breakaways. You can’t expect the goaltender to make all the saves.”

Sebastien Caron made his first appearance for the Ducks since being acquired Dec. 28 in a trade with Chicago. Caron earned a mock cheer from the announced sellout crowd of 17,174 when he stopped his first shot.

Caron wasn’t spared, as the second shot he faced blew past him, courtesy of forward Jamal Mayers. The Ducks had been the last team to not give up a short-handed goal.

All that was left for the sixth consecutive sellout crowd was to boo lustily at the end of the second period and at the conclusion. Corey Perry and Teemu Selanne scored meaningless third-period goals.

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