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Selanne, McDonald each score twice for Ducks

Mar 17, 2007 - 6:59 AM ANAHEIM, California (Ticker) -- Teemu Selanne and Andy McDonald have been down this road before.

Selanne and McDonald scored two goals apiece for the second time in three games and captain Scott Niedermayer collected three assists to lead the Anaheim Ducks to a 5-2 victory over the Chicago Blackhawks.

Anaheim (43-17-12) tied the franchise record for victories set last season and moved within one point of the Detroit Red Wings (45-17-9) for the league's best record.

"That's something that I leave to you guys to think about," Anaheim coach Randy Carlyle said of the race for the Presidents Trophy. "I think those accomplishments are things that you look at after the season. ... From a coach's perspective, what you want at this point of the season is to play well and to stay healthy for the playoffs."

"It was a great team win," Ducks left wing Chris Kunitz said. "(Goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov) played great and our power play was obviously clicking tonight. Teemu and Mac were great tonight, and that helps. We had all four lines going. When we flow like that and get good offense early on, we tend to win."

After scoring twice in Sunday's triumph over the Vancouver Canucks, Selanne completed his 11th multi-goal game of the season in the first period, beating goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin twice for a 3-0 lead.

Selanne's second tally came with the man-advantage, giving him a league-leading 23rd power-play goal. He also surpassed Paul Kariya's all-time franchise mark (108).

"I leave it up to you guys to tell me about all of those," Selanne said. "What's important is that we picked up two more points. I thought that we played really well."

"We talked about staying out of the box," Chicago coach Denis Savard said. "Their power play has been running pretty good. We started out in the box and got into penalty trouble. We gave up some power-play goals. It's pretty tough to catch up to a team like that."

McDonald, who also had a pair of tallies Sunday, netted his two goals in a 3:13 span of the second period to widen the margin to 5-0. His second tally came on a power play and led Chicago to replace Khabibulin with Patrick Lalime.

"It was a physical game," McDonald said "I've always said that I think this team responds well when it's physical. I think it kind of woke us up and I think we played pretty well tonight."

Corey Perry scored his 17th goal in the opening session and Bryzgalov made 31 saves for the Ducks, who are unbeaten in regulation in their last 11 games and are 25-5-8 at home this season.

Rene Bourque and Jason Williams scored goals, Khabibulin stopped just 12 shots and Lalime nine for the Blackhawks, who have split the first four contests of a five-game road swing.

"They're a good team and it doesn't take much to give them a little bit of room," Lalime said. "When they have chances, they just put it in the net. They have a good power play and we paid for it."

"We took some penalties and put ourselves down 5-on-3 a couple of times, and they were able to capitalize," Chicago defenseman Cam Barker said. "They played very well on special teams tonight."