The play that may’ve cost Detroit the series? (AP photo)

The Ducks have taken back home ice advantage with a solid 4-0 win in Detroit for a 2-1 series lead. Nick Bonino scored on the power play 18 seconds after Wings forward Justin Abdelkader was ejected for a major charging penatly when he ran over Ducks defenseman Tony Lydman (in the above picture) and that is likely your turning point in the series since that ended a hard-fought scoreless tie at the time. Ryan Getzlaf then scored his second career postseason shorthanded goal on an awful Detroit turnover in their own zone in the 3rd helping goalie Jonas Hiller (who made 23 saves) get the win.

The following are some of the Ducks postgame reactions to what had just happened…

Anaheim coach Bruce Boudreau on the 5 minute power play:

Boudreau on Getlaf’s big 2nd goal in the 3rd period:

Ducks center Nick Bonino who finally got his team on the board in the 2nd period on his huge goal:

Winning goalie Jonas Hiller:

Hiller feels his penalty killing unit forgot about the last game:

Finally captain Ryan Getzlaf is happy but not enough until they put the Wings away in this series:

So the team scoring first has won every game in this series so far, but who’ll be the lucky club to do that in game 4 on Monday night???

The following is my post from after Thursday’s game 2 in Anaheim in which some technical issues made it impossible to put this up for you earlier…so thanks for your patience.

Not the celebration that Anaheim fans were hoping to see

The previously ‘Mighty’ Ducks of Anaheim were disappointing to start each period last night including the Overtime when Detroit scored just a minute and 21 seconds in for a 5-4 win to even their series at 1-1.

Ducks goalie Jonas Hiller allowed a goal in the first 48 seconds of the game and before you knew it…the Redwings had leads of 3-0 and 4-1. But those battling ‘Quackers’ refused to die on home ice finally tying it on a Bobby Ryan goal with only 2:22 left in regulation. But Anaheim defenseman Sheldon Souray took a questionble slashing penalty in front of his net with 38 seconds left in regulation and Swedish native Gustav Nyquist cashed that in for his game winning goal with just 2 seconds remaining on the OT power play.

Throughout the game, I was thinking the Ducks were much too sloppy in their own zone something I asked one of the team’s statisticians about. He told me the 3rd period was one of the worst of the season at 10 turnovers in their own territory…but as you’ll hear, not every player agreed with that. The bottom line is that the Ducks didn’t play well enough for the entire game to really deserve the win (although they almost gutted one out in spectacular fashion!).

Afterwards I got comments from the following players who didn’t seem too phased at the task of taking care of biz in games 3 and 4 in Hockeytown.

Ducks goalie Jonas Hiller:

Ducks rightwing Bobby Ryan:

Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf:

Ducks defenseman Luca Sbisa:

Ducks defenseman Sheldon Souray:

So the Wings went home without one of their quality young guys as rookie defenseman Danny DeKeyser broke a thumb in the 3rd period and he is likely done for the playoffs. And to me that is a loss that strengthens Anaheim’s depth over the Wings to a point that gives them a huge edge from here on…now can they can take advantage of that? My guess is–YES, they will.