*-- Updates with Wisniewski release from hospital.

Through three games, the third period has been white-knuckle time for the Ducks in their playoff series with Detroit.
Even though Anaheim leads the series 2-1, they've been outshot 51-17 in the third period, and outscored 2-0. That includes Detroit's 18-3 advantage in Tuesday's Game 3.
Add in the three overtimes in Game 2, and the Ducks have been outgunned 80-34 after the second intermission.
A couple of different theories were advanced by the Ducks to try to explain this after their team meeting and optional practice on Wednesday at the Honda Center.
"I don't think anybody's happy how we played the third period," said Teemu Selanne. " It seems like every time when we start to play safe and start backing up, we're going to have problems.
"The best defense is offense. You can't really change your style and your game plan there. And I think we changed too much in the third period, and they got momentum."
Forward Todd Marchant thinks desperation on the part of the Red Wings is a factor.
"In two of the games, we've been in the lead, and they've been trying to catch us," he said. "And in one game, it was tied.
"You know, when a team is down or fighting back, you're going to do anything you possibly can. At times, it's very difficult with the team that is in the lead to turn that around and get your opportunities. A lot of times it seems like you're receiving rushes because they are putting pressure on you. And they're taking chances. So it's certainly an area we have to improve that, and hopefully we can do that in Game 4."
It's also been suggested that the Ducks, who are not spreading their minutes around quite as evenly as the Red Wings, might be wearing down as the game progressed, a theory that sent coach Randy Carlyle into full bristling, blustering mode.
"Well, they like to tell everyone they are (wearing Anaheim down)," Carlyle said, referring to the Red Wings. "They're worried about our players. I've got to worry about our players. I'm worried about our players performing to the level they perform to.
"As far as anybody getting tired: It's the playoffs, they're young, they're well-conditioned athletes. We worry about our players and we take the necessary steps that we feel are going to give us the best chance to recover."
Wisniewski update: As of the Ducks' practice, defenseman James Wisniewski had been scheduled to remain at the UCI Medical Center until Thursday morning after being hospitalized with a lung contusion after taking a shot to the chest in Game 3. He's expected to be released from the hospital Thursday morning.
"He'll stay, I think it's a 36-hour time frame, just to watch as a precautionary (measure)," said Carlyle. "He's moving forward, he's healing. He's just in a situation where he'll rest in the hospital."
But later Wednesday afternoon, the Ducks reported Wisniewski had been cleared to go home and released from the hospital.
Carlyle said there is no estimate when or if Wisniewski might return.
"Obviously we have to wait sure there's no more damage being done, or his recovery is fully under way," he said. "It's a unique injury from the standpoint that with all the protection that's out there, you very rarely get a puck in that area."
Brendan Mikkelson, Brett Festerling and Brian Salcido are the candidates to move into the starting lineup. None have seen playoff action so far. Mikkelson played 34 regular-season games with two assists and a plus-minus of zero; Festerling played 40 games and had five assists and was plus-five. Salcido, a 24-year-old born in Hermosa Beach, played two games, had one assist and was plus two; with the Ducks' Iowa farm team, he had 10 goals, 33 assists and 108 penalty minutes, and was minus-22.
"We have to make a decision on one of those three," said Carlyle, "and we'll do that in the next 24 hours. Both Festerling and Mikkelson have played with our hockey club this year, so we feel confident with putting one of those guys in."
Carlyle also referenced Tomas Holmstrom's elbow to Wisniewski after the defenseman had been hit by the puck, as he had after Tuesday's game. So he was asked if he knew if the league was reviewing the hit.
"Don't know that," he said. "Don't know that for sure.
"There were a few incidents last night that I'm sure left the war room" -- the NHL situation room in Toronto, where goals and other plays are reviewed -- "scanning tapes. There was a cross-check in the last flurry, with 10 seconds left, to the head area, on Scotty Niedermayer. There were a few upper blows being delivered in various situations in the series."
Carlyle was asked who cross-checked Niedermayer.
"Do I have to give you everything, for crying out loud?" he responded.
Given a yes in response, he didn't hesitate: "(Johan) Franzen."
Franzen, incidentally, is tied for the Red Wings' scoring lead with four goals and eight points in seven games.
Not letting go: Inevitably, there was still a lot of talk about the tying goal that wasn't, a Detroit score by Marion Hossa with 1:04 remaining that would have made it 2-2, but was disallowed because referee Brad Watson lost sight of the puck and blew his whistle.
"Last night was a situation that probably happens," said Carlyle, "on our hockey club, five or six times a year, where a puck is available, for us or against us. Those things happen all the time. And everybody's saying why did they blow the whistle? Well, because the individual lost sight of the puck. It's all about positioning. He moved to the corner, and fortunately for us, his sight line was blocked.
"We got a break."
Said Selanne, "Yeah, it was lucky. The referee, he didn't see the puck, and makes the whistle. It was our luck."
Selanne was asked if there should be a way to review such plays, but recognized this would be almost impossible because at least some players stop when they hear the whistle.
"It's hard when the referee blows the whistle," he said. "I don't think you can go and have any other option. That's the tough part. ...
"That was a good break for us. It's tough. The refereeing in this league is not easy. Everything happens so quickly and you have to react.
It was a tough break for Detroit, but you know, you have to move on."

Today's chapter of the four-day epic begins at a Starbucks within sight of the Honda Center, where the Ducks are holding an 11:30 a.m. practice. The Red Wings follow at 2 p.m., but by then I'll be on my way to Staples Center, where I'll post a report on the Ducks and grab my spot in the pressroom for Game 2 of the Lakers-Rockets series.
Early arrival is clearly a good idea at Staples. Every seat in the workroom was filled well before Game 1 -- which has at least a little bit to do with the Chinese media contingent. I counted 22 credentials for members of the Chinese media on the Game 1 seating chart, which to Western eyes certainly seems a tad excessive. I mean, think about it: The Dodgers now have one full-time beat reporter (two if you include mlb.com's Ken Gurnick) -- and one very tall guy from China has 22 beat reporters. Maybe I should start working on my Mandarin.
Anyway, blog plans for today are for a Ducks report, a Lakers pregame report and a Lakers postgame report. Plus, of course, the Lakers game column for Thursday's paper.
I'm keeping a word count on just how much I write in this stretch. I'll share it with you at the finish. Let's just say the number is already a bit daunting.

Not surprisingly, a lot of the postgame talk after the Ducks beat Detroit 2-1 on Tuesday night was about the goal that wasn't -- a potential tying goal by Marion Hossa late in the game (with 1:04 left by my memory, 1:09 remaining according to the AP story) that was disallowed because referee Brad Watson lost sight of the puck and blew the whistle, thinking it was under Ducks goalie Jonas Hiller. It wasn't, and Hossa knocked the loose puck in, to no avail.
Not surprisingly, the Red Wings were not happy, while the Ducks basically shrugged and said, that's the way it goes.
"We should be playing obviously right now," said Detroit coach Mike Babcock. "Two teams scored twice tonight, but it just didn't work out that way.
"There's no sense in complaining about the refereeing or anything like that. I think we should have started better."
Said Red Wings forward Dan Cleary, "Early whistle, maybe. In a situation like that, you have to make sure the puck is covered at least."
Which it wasn't, as noted by Henrik Zetterberg, who scored the lone Detroit goal.
"The puck wasn't covered and it was just sliding under him. It was lying on the far post for awhile. Unfortunately, he didn't see that and he blew the whistle."
Ducks coach Randy Carlyle said it was something he'd seen before.
"You have to remember that the official has the ability, if he thinks he should have blown the whistle, the play is dead," said Carlyle. "He lost sight of the puck and he blew the whistle. He thought the puck was dead underneath the goalie and blew the whistle. ...
"We've been the victim of that numerous times this year, where the puck seems to be alive, we've made the play on the puck and he blows the whistle and says, 'Well, I lost sight of the puck.' "
To the Ducks, there was no disputing what had happened, though everyone seemed to recognize a bit of good fortune.
"It was lucky for us," said Hiller, who made 45 saves, "but I always say you have to fight to be lucky and everybody in here fought hard tonight. I was looking at the referee behind and he waived it off right away."
Todd Marchant said Watson "blatantly blew the whistle before it went in. The referee was right there, right behind the net. If he couldn't see it, he's got to blow the whistle. That's his job.
"I'm sure they aren't happy about it."
Wisniewski update: Anaheim defenseman James Winsniewski was taken off the ice on a stretcher after taking a shot to the chest in the second period. A statement from the Ducks reported tests at the UCI Medical Center diagnosed a lung contusion, and that Wisniewski would be held overnight as a precautionary measure.
"He took a pretty good elbow after the fact, too," said Carlyle. "I'd like to mention that. ... The shot to the upper chest was enough, but when you're huddled over and someone gives you a good, stiff elbow to the chin, it's a little bit surprising."

The Ducks' primary focus Monday? Getting over Sunday.
And there was plenty to get over, what with the three-overtime win at Detroit, followed by flight home. So it's not surprising that the Ducks kept it light in a physical sense Monday, holding a 12:30 p.m. team meeting, followed by an optional skate.
"I just think they're tired right now," Coach Randy Carlyle said of his players. "It's taxing on the body, mentally and physically.
"The most important thing for the players, the athletes, is to make sure they have the proper nutrition and get as much rest as possible and eat proper foods here today, and then get the proper sleep and make sure we take all the necessary steps to prepare for tomorrow, because it's a very, very huge hockey game for our team and the Detroit Red Wings."
Todd Marchant, who scored the winning goal early in the third overtime, knew which part of the physical/mental equation was tougher.
"Physically, I didn't feel like I was that tired," he said. "Mentally is where you get taxed. You keep saying to yourself, 'It could be this next shift. It could be the one after that. That could be the difference.'
"We just tried to focus on one shift at a time, and whoever was going to go over those boards is going to go out and give it their best effort. Some guys played more than others, obviously, but we relied on everybody. We needed a contribution from everybody on that bench."
With that in mind, he said, the recover day was "huge.
"We talk about it all the time -- rest and nutrition are as important a part of the game as going out on the ice. Today's a day we all come in here -- some guys go on the ice, but it's all about preparing yourself for tomorrow's game. And we know that they're going to be prepared, and we're focused on what we have to do to be successful."
Ryan Getzlaf, who logged an amazing 35:46 of ice time -- more in keeping with a defenseman than a forward -- was another of the many players who did not go on the Honda Center ice Monday.
"Everybody's different," he said. "Some guys go and ride the bike and just stretch and all that stuff. Personally, I do a little of both, actually. I ride the bike and stuff, and we're going to stretch and make sure we're hydrated."
Goalie Jonas Hiller, who made 59 saves in the longest game of his career, felt he'd have no problem in bouncing back.
"Obviously, I've got stuff that I do, like when I play two games in three days," said Hiller. "So I eat well, I drink a lot, and have proper nutrition and everything. I think we did a pretty good job already last night, so I felt pretty good today, and my weight was still there, so I think I'm on the right track."
While he'd never played in a game remotely as long -- in the Swiss League, where he played before coming to Anaheim, playoff games are decided by shootouts after one overtime period -- he didn't feel he was totally in uncharted territory.
"I have some experience, too, so I know how my body's going to react," he said. "For example, we played Spengler Cup" -- a prestigious Swiss tournament -- "where you play like four games in five days. That's even tougher. So I know how I get my body back and my mind back."
And he didn't expect Tuesday's game to be any tougher than any other.
"They played as long as we did, and it's sure easier if you come out of such a game with a win," Hiller said. "But I think everybody's going to be ready tomorrow from the first second."
The message: Carlyle was asked what he told the team going into the third period, and if he'd done anything special in determining if any players were particularly worn down by the marathon.
"What we do is, we basically go in there and just say, hey, we're looking for a hero," he said. "There's a chance in here -- we've got 18 people or 19 people or 20 people that have a chance to be a hero. And a hero might mean blocking a shot. It might be taking a check to make a play. It might be assisting on a goal. It might be driving the middle lane.
"The heroes are not always the guy that puts the puck in the net. It's just as important to prevent a goal as it is to score one in this situation.
"Stay patient, don't go outside the structure, don't play the game on your backhand, make strong plays. That's basically the message, for all three intermissions were the same."
The game, however, tends to change a bit, noted Marchant.
"Well, I think there's little things that you have be aware of," he said. "You have to take shorter shifts. I think once you saw it get later and later, guys were taking one rush up the ice, one rush back and then changing. You don't want to get caught out there too long.
You want to make the right play, the simple play. Don't get too crazy with the puck. And both teams were able to do that. They generated a lot of shots on net, but we generated our chances, too."
And ultimately, the Ducks were very satisfied with the result.
"This is the playoffs," said Marchant. "This is why we play the game. (NBC broadcaster) Darren Pang asked me, 'Are you guys tired?' I'm like, 'Heck no.' Chris Osgood (Detroit's goalie) said it the best: It was a fun game to play. It was.
"You ask anybody in this dressing room. We enjoyed playing that game. Tired as we were, that's what you live for. That's what you train so hard for. So it was a pleasure to be in that game."

These are going to be four full days.
With the Lakers and Ducks both home for playoff games -- the Lakers playing tonight and Wednesday in Games 1 and 2 of their second-round series with Houston, and the Ducks going Tuesday and Thursday in Games 3 and 4 of their second-round series with Detroit -- I'm going to be bouncing between the two series every day. Today, I was in Anaheim for the Ducks' 12:30 p.m. media availability (a few notes from that will follow); now I'm at Staples Center, having just finished transcribing about a half-hour of audio tape from that session, and awaiting the start of Lakers-Rockets.
This will be a tough write because it will start about 7:50 p.m., probably end about 10:20 p.m., and my column will be due at 10:45. Normally, I have a first-edition deadline of 10:30 and a final deadline about an hour later, but with a single edition on Monday, I get only one shot, and am pretty much caught in no-man's land in terms of getting post-game comments; no one is available until about 15 minutes after the game, so I can either get something, come back to the media room and finish the column -- sacrificing all other post game comments -- or go without comments and get some material to follow-up on line. Probably, I'll go with the second option.
Tomorrow, it will be Lakers practice and the Ducks game; Wednesday, Ducks practice and the Lakers game, and Thursday, Lakers practice (assuming they practice before flying to Houston, which is likely) and the Ducks game.
I'm going to try to post blog entries at least a couple of times a day throughout the process, so check back frequently between now and Thursday.

The thing about writing a column from an NHL playoff game is that you always have to be aware that the game will go multiple overtimes and last far beyond even the latest newspaper deadline. So it's usually a good idea to have something in hand you can send to fill the space in the paper if that should occur.
This is the column I had ready to go Thursday, just in case the Ducks and Sharks had played a game that was still going at deadline.

ANAHEIM -- A strange thing happened as I bounced from the NBA playoffs to the NBA postseason: It became hard to tell them apart.
After dropping in on the Ducks' morning skate Thursday, I felt remarkably like I was back at the Lakers' practice facility in El Segundo 24 hours earlier.
No, it's not that all the games start running together. And obviously, the Ducks' locker room has no seven-footers, and the Lakers don't have Canadian accents.
But in listening to the Ducks talk about their preparations for Thursday night's playoff series with San Jose -- the series the Ducks led 2-1 going into Game 4 -- it was hard not to hear echoes of the Lakers talking about Utah.
Consider Ducks forward Corey Perry, talking about the desire to establish early control in Game 4.
"We have to have a strong start," Perry said. "We have to be physical, we have to get on the forecheck and we have to stay out of the penalty box and limit our turnovers."
Later, he added, "Just take them out of their rhythm. If we take them out of their rhythm and be physical, we'll be successful."
Compare that to what Pau Gasol had to say about the challenge the Lakers were going to face in their first road game of the Utah series.
"It's going to be hard," said Gasol, "but I think if we come out of the locker room and jump on them early and try and control the tempo of the game, and don't let them get comfortable and get going in their usual stuff, I think we can be successful there."
In the Ducks' locker room, you had Todd Marchant saying Thursday's game would come down to "execution and effort, basically. Last game, we didn't have quite the same effort and execution we had in Game 2."
In the Lakers' post-practice media session Wednesday, you had Lamar Odom saying, "We're going to come out, play a little harder than we played yesterday, focus, try to do everything right."
In Anaheim, there was Teemu Selanne talking about the fact that Thursday's game was the 10th between the Ducks and Sharks.
"Obviously, we've played them so many times," said Selanne. "So there's no secrets. ... I think it's just battle -- who wants to win more. That's how it works."
In El Segundo, before the first-game of the Lakers-Jazz series, Phil Jackson was saying something similar, since the Lakers finished the regular season against Utah, then had five days to prepare to face the Jazz again.
"I don't think we can say a whole lot more about them other than just to say, go out, you've got all the information, now put it into play," he said. "It's all about reactions now. It's all about instincts and reactions."
You play these teams again and again and again, things are going to begin to look really familiar. Which is, of course, where the coaches start putting their stamp on things. They need to make them less familiar -- and more successful.
And so, with that in mind, you hear this:
"You have to make adjustments continually, and some of them are in-game and some of them are between, day to day. We try to review some of the things we felt we didn't do very well, and we'll try to correct some of those things."
And this:
"We have to anticipate (adjustments). And that's really the key, I think, in the playoffs, anticipating what the other team is going to do."
The first of those comments was from Ducks coach Randy Carlyle. The second was from Phil Jackson. But they could just as easily have been reversed.
All of which suggests more than mere coincidence. The cynically inclined might say it means all athletes work from the same book of clichés, but it's a bit deeper than that.
What this really points to is the degree that there are certain constants in all sports -- the importance of defense, say, or consistent effort. And hockey and basketball, in particular, share more characteristics than the casual onlooker might perceive, even down to certain structural concepts of movement, given that in each, five players are always moving toward a goal. It's just that in hockey, a sixth player guards that goal.
The parallels become even greater at playoff time, when teams in both sports must adjust to playing the same opponent repeatedly is a challenge distinct from that of the regular season. (To quote Jackson: "During the regular season, you want to maintain and sustain an effort. Now you improve.")
And so, as long as the Lakers and Ducks continue in the postseason, you probably shouldn't be surprised if you continue to hear parallel comments from both teams.
Ultimately, they're both in the business of winning and losing. And there are only so many ways to do those things.
-- Contact David Lassen at dlassen@VenturaCountyStar.com.