STANLEY CUP Friesen powers Devils' victory

Jeff Friesen scored two of the Devils goals in a 3-0 win over the Mighty Ducks.
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) -- Jeff Friesen scored the goal against his former team that Petr Sykora nearly got for his.
That went a long way toward giving the New Jersey Devils a win in the opener of the Stanley Cup finals.
Friesen scored the first and last goals to lead the Devils over his former Anaheim Mighty Ducks teammates 3-0 on Tuesday night. He has four game-winners in seven games.
Sykora, dealt to Anaheim for Friesen, almost put the surprising Ducks in front less than five minutes in. But his drive above the left circle against Martin Brodeur clanged off the right post.
That wasn't one of the Mighty Ducks' paltry 16 shots on net, but it might have been their best chance to get a puck past Brodeur.
"I thought in the first period we had some pretty good jump, but we didn't execute," forward Paul Kariya said.
Offense limited
If executing means recording shots on goal, he couldn't have been more right. The Ducks had just four shots in each of the first two periods and only two came from players counted on for offense.
And even that is questionable, as Rob Niedermayer had those. Niedermayer was a trade-deadline castoff from Calgary and has only accounted for eight points in these playoffs -- good enough for a second-place tie on his team.
"We not only need shots, we have to put more pucks at the net," Niedermayer said. "We have to get some people in front of Marty, too. They're doing a good job of boxing us out and we have to fight through that."
Brodeur went long stretches without much action. His busiest time was in the third period when the Ducks sent eight shots his way. But it was in that period that Grant Marshall stretched New Jersey's lead to two goals, and Friesen sealed the win with an empty-netter.
"You just want to keep them down," said Brodeur after his fifth shutout of these playoffs. "It's important that we didn't give them any life late in the game."
Anemic output
The Ducks didn't show many signs of life in the beginning and middle, either. They didn't want to use the excuse that their 10-day layoff before their finals debut might have left them rusty. But this output was anemic even by their non-offensive standards.
Sykora had a team-high 34 goals during the season, but a mere two shots. Kariya had just one, and Adam Oates was held without a shot. He nearly scored midway through the third, but his attempt at a seemingly open net was pushed right into a sprawling Brodeur.
Anaheim's offense that mustered two goals or fewer in six of the previous eight games was shut out for the first time in this postseason.
Friesen sent a fluttering shot from the left circle that got past Jean-Sebastien Giguere's blocker 1:45 into the second. The Devils have been talking about the importance of getting shots past the hot goalie to shake the confidence he built up in series wins over Detroit, Dallas and Minnesota.
Giguere stopped 476 of 496 shots in his first 14 playoff games.
"I don't think we played our game," Giguere said. "If we want to have a chance to be successful, we've got to do what we do."