With a game every other day for the Ducks, there is no time to sit around either moping about losses or languishing in wins. A shootout win over Calgary on Monday was ancient history by Wednesday when Carolina came to town. When they left, the Ducks had a 3-2 win, their second in a row.

The Hurricanes, who are struggling this season even more mightily than the Ducks, got a good start. Tom Kostopoulos scored at 1:23 of the first period. The Ducks regrouped and spent most of the rest of the period in Carolina’s end, but nothing would get through Manny Legace.

“There’s no bad teams in this hockey league,” said Ryan Getzlaf. “They played well tonight. We’re lucky to get two points. We did a good job staying patient and not getting all wound up.”

The Ducks continued to get chances and finally got a power play goal into the net as the second period was winding down. Scott Niedermayer whiffed on his shot, but it still went up and over Legace to tie the game up at 19:11. A goal is a goal, and Anaheim needed that one.

Going into the third period, the Ducks got strong goaltending from Jean-Sebastien Giguere, who stopped 31 shots on goal for the franchise 300th home victory.

The Ducks then got what they needed – scoring from the third line. Petteri Nokelainen got the go-ahead goal at 13:03. It was just his second goal of the season, but this one was huge.

“It was really nice to get a goal,” said Nokelainen. “It turned out to be a big one. Our line played pretty well tonight. We’ve been struggling there a little bit. I know we have to be more defensive line, but at the same time you have to score some goals, too, and hopefully we can do that. Today I think we did a good job cycling down low and creating some offense here.”

The Ducks have needed overtime and a shootout for their past two wins, so there was a huge sigh of relief when Teemu Selanne got the insurance marker at 18:28. They needed it. The next shift Brandon Sutter scored to pull Carolina back within one goal at 19:07.

After taking a timeout to settle down, the Ducks held on in the remaining seconds to earn the victory in regulation.

“I think we played pretty well tonight,” Giguere observed. .”They were a desperate team and they played a pretty good game but we kept with it. We kept playing our game. There were stretches where it didn’t necessarily go our way but we didn’t panic. We just kept with it. We ended up scoring some big goals.”

For the Ducks, every point is critical, so these two points are something to truly be thankful for. Their next opportunity to earn points in the standings comes on Friday against the red hot Chicago Blackhawks, who have won eight in a row.

In other notes: Joffrey Lupul missed his third game with back spasms. Corey Perry’s assist on Niedermayer’s goal kept his scoring streak alive at 16 games.