Quacked

(PHOTO: Harry How/Getty Images)

A scapegoat is a wonderful thing to have. Portraying yourself as somebody else’s scapegoat is even better. In that regard, the Ducks want to have their cake and eat it too.

There’s a certain romanticism to playing the victim. It avoids the unpleasant reality of owning the ultimate responsibility for your actions and their consequences.

That romantic notion, as it were, has become part of the fabric of the culture that surrounds the team. The current iteration of the Anaheim Ducks (i.e. post-lockout) has built its reputation on toughness — or hooliganism, if you ask the rest of the league. The consequence of rough and tumble hockey is an increased risk for penalties and suspensions, something to which the Ducks are no strangers.

The missing causal link, at least until this season, was the toll all the shorthanded time takes on the team’s overall record. Despite missing the playoffs in 2009-10, the Ducks have carried on with their shenanigans since Randy Carlyle took the reins in 2005, constantly facing the specter of punishment, without being any worse for wear.

Sure, there were always gripes about the refereeing, but at the end of the day, the team could ultimately overcome the stacked officiating odds we all regularly condemn. For whatever reason, that has not been the case this season. odds we all regularly condemn. For whatever reason, that has not been the case this season. Something has caught up to the Ducks: complacency, lack of discipline and a tired coaching routine are all likely candidates, and the worst news is that the ship is still sinking.

As of this writing, the Ducks are 27th in the NHL having been shorthanded a whopping 143 times, which is 57% more often than the category-leading San Jose Sharks.

Anaheim is 12th in penalty killing efficiency, but you don’t have to be a statistics expert to deduce that no matter where the team ranks in that category, the more often it is shorthanded the more goals against will result.

Worse still, the Ducks are one of only two teams (the other being the Calgary Flames) that has not scored a shorthanded goal this season. In tandem with the other special teams stats, it’s indicative of a bigger problem: the Ducks simply can’t afford to take penalties.

Rather than deal with that unpleasant reality, fans and players alike have fallen back on the staple trope of blaming the referees — perhaps because on some level, they know the stats don’t lie.

No word yet on whether the Bruce Boudreau regime will be the harbinger of accountability, but if the team hopes to move onward and upward, something has to change.

Teams that succeed find ways to rise to the challenges on the road to victory, but it seems like the Ducks are instead throwing up their own roadblocks.

The eternal hell of watching a game slip away because of a bad penalty call or costly mistake is, to some degree, a construct of the players as much as the officials. The prison cell that has this team trapped may be guarded by zebras, but it’s the players who hold the keys.