"This night, Jonas Hiller denied the Red Wings' attempt at pulling off a second straight rally.

Playing 24 hours after polishing off a top contender and then flying on to their next stop, the Red Wings weren't able to solve Hiller, who made 46 saves to hand the Wings a 3-1 loss Wednesday at Honda Center.

"We played a good game, we generated a lot of scoring chances," Jimmy Howard said after making 27 saves. "Their guy stole two points for them tonight, basically."

With Calgary picking up two points against Carolina, the Wings dropped to ninth place in the Western Conference standings, though it's a logjam around that spot. The Wings were in eighth after rallying from a two-goal deficit to polish off the Sharks Tuesday at San Jose, but falling behind by three goals to the Ducks proved insurmountable.

"Coming from behind in back-to-back games on the road isn't the ideal spot you want to be in," said Todd Bertuzzi, who had four shots on net. "I didn't think we played horrible - there was a little bit of running around early in our zone, but then we settled down and we had enough chances to score, just, Hiller came through for them.

"We can't be spotting teams like that leads. We talked about it - get the puck deep and get on the forecheck. We started like that but then their big line got on a roll there cycling the puck and all that and it seemed like they got a little bit momentum from that. They got a couple of cheesy goals from the point."

Ryan Whitney scored on a setup by Ryan Getzlaf when the puck went in off Brad Stuart's foot, and Kyle Chipchura got credit for a goal when the puck went in off his forearm at 16:13 of the first period."