Maybe the Ducks needed this, needed to pay the price for letting their game fray around the edges, needed to remember the sting of skating off the ice in defeat after victory had been so tantalizingly close.
They brooded for a while after their 4-3 overtime loss to the Calgary Flames on Tuesday sliced their series lead to two games to one, fretting for the two hours or so it took their bus to transport them to the resort city of Banff for a few days.
By Wednesday morning they were smiling, laughing and playing soccer beneath the looming shadows of the Canadian Rockies, at least until clouds began spitting snow showers and drove them inside the gleaming Ferlands Banff Recreation Center.