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On the road again: Ducks at Vancouver

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Vancouver, Canada — The Oilers’ unsuccessful challenge of the legality of Teemu Selanne‘s stick remains big news here, two days after the Ducks left Edmonton with a 5-3 victory and Selanne left with a batch of certifiably legal sticks.

Every Canadian sports highlight show here — and there are many of them — showed Oilers Coach Craig MacTavish challenging the stick and his chagrin when the blade was found to be under the limit. The Oilers had cut the Ducks’ lead to 4-3, but their bad call gave the Ducks a power play, which clinched the game.

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Every Canadian sports highlight show replayed the incident on a seemingly endless loop, making it difficult to escape seeing it over and over and over again.

‘Only in Canada,’ Selanne said after the Ducks’ morning skate today. ‘It’s unbelievable.

‘The old saying is if you don’t cheat, you don’t try enough, but my sticks are still legal.’

The repeated replays didn’t surprise him.

‘I played 4 1/2 years in Winnipeg. They make a huge deal over everything in hockey here,’ he said.

‘The bottom line is that game should be over before that. I feel sorry for MacTavish because at least he tried it. His team didn’t try for two periods.’

Lost in the kerfuffle (a great Canadian term, meaning a big fuss over not very much) was the first NHL goal for Ducks defenseman Sheldon Brookbank, scored in his 86th big league game.

He had just come out of the penalty box when he joined a rush, took a nice backpass from Ryan Getzlaf and ripped a shot past Dwayne Roloson to the goalie’s stick side.

‘Normally, I’d be thinking I should probably go off the ice, but it’s a one-on-two, I should probably make it a two-on-two,’ said Brookbank, who played for Nashville and New Jersey before the Ducks acquired him from the Devils on Feb. 3 for college prospect David McIntyre.

‘I played a couple games on the wing in my NHL career so I’m comfortable. I did snipe a few goals in the American league; it just hasn’t come as natural in the NHL.’

Brookbank, who scored 15 goals and 53 points for Milwaukee of the AHL in the 2006-07 season, said he was hesitant to celebrate his goal because he had lost three apparent goals to a scoring change, an interference call and an offside call.

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‘It took me a little longer than I’d hoped,’ he said of his goal.

More on the Ducks’ game at Vancouver later at www.latimes.com/sports

— Helene Elliott

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