ANAHEIM In the end, all the action can be boiled down to two checks.

Drew Miller made his.

Andrej Meszaros missed his.

The difference proved to be a 3-2 win for the Ducks in Monday's opening game of the Stanley Cup Finals. It may well symbolize the ultimate difference in the series, as well.

Bigger, stronger, tougher, the Ducks threw their weight around, and it worked for them.

The completeness of the physical effort was represented by Miller, who was playing just his second NHL game both in these playoffs and yet not only found himself of the Ducks' first line, playing with Teemu Selanne and Andy McDonald, but made himself at home there. His check caused Ottawa's Wade Redden to turn the puck over to Selanne, who passed to McDonald for Anaheim's first goal.

"I tried to take the body," said Miller. "That's what our game plan is, to take the body as much we can. Take the body and good things happen."

That flashing red light behind Ottawa goalie Ray Emery was proof.

"I certainly give him credit to come in and play like that," said McDonald of his new linemate. "It's probably not easy. I'm sure he's really nervous. But he did a really good job. He was aggressive. He skated hard. And on the goal, he went in and made contact and they turned the puck over."

At the other end of the physicality scale, there was Meszaros, who had a chance to wipe out Rob Niedermayer behind the Ottawa goal, but missed the check, allowing Niedermayer to center the puck to a wide-open Travis Moen, who caught a good hop on the choppy ice and fired in the game-winner with 2:51 remaining.

"It was kind of bouncing and I got lucky and caught it on the way down," said Moen, one of those unlikely heroes a team must have to win in the playoffs. After scoring 11 regular-season goals, he has five in the playoffs. "I just had a lucky shot and it went in."

It's not as if Ottawa can't be physical the Senators were credited with 21 hits to the Ducks' 30 but that physicality is so much effective for a Ducks team with bigger bodies, as well as both enthusiasm and appreciation for the effectiveness of physical play.

The Ducks' style of play firing the puck into the opponent's zone and pursuing it has long been dubbed "dump and chase," but with this team, it's more like "dump and thump." An Ottawa player would pick up the puck, some guy in a black jersey would hit him, and the Ducks would end up with possession as witnessed by Ottawa's 14 giveaways. The Ducks committed five.

"I think the key to our play is getting in on the forecheck," said Rob Niedermayer. " In the second, I thought we really got that going and got a few turnovers, but in the third, I thought we really concentrated well on it. That's our game."

The Ducks' kid line Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry and Dustin Miller, all of them over 6-foot-3 and 200 pounds may prove to be the physical weapon the smaller Senators can't match. They had stretches where they dominated the play and were rewarded with a Getzlaf goal at 5:44 of the third period.

But like Niedermayer, Getzlaf felt the Ducks took a little while to establish that physicality, and wanted to make sure the group responsible the fourth-line unit of Shawn Thornton, Brad May and Todd Marchant received proper credit.

They "went out with that one shift and hit everything in sight and kept that puck in their zone for about 2 minutes," he said. "You've got to give all the credit to those guys for sparking our group, and I don't think we looked back after that.

"We had everybody rolling, and everybody was hitting and chipping and it just looked good out there after that."

It was a gratifying performance for coach Randy Carlyle.

"I think it's huge when you have those character individuals Thornton, May and Marchant come on to make a strong presence in a hockey game, in a Stanley Cup Final."

Certainly, it was an enormous part of the Ducks establishing the style they want to play, a style that based on Game 1 certainly looks like it can be both successful and decisive in this series.

And one reason that's the case is that it is a characteristic that runs deep on this Anaheim roster. When Getzlaf said everybody was hitting, it was only a slight exaggeration. Three lines had goals, and physicality played a part in all of them. The fourth line, May's, didn't score, but it certainly hit.

In all, Ducks' 30 hits were spread over 12 players, led by pesky Samuel Pahlsson (eight hits) and Rob Niedermayer (five).

About the only times the Ducks weren't hitting was when they had the puck. And when that happened, they were so strong Ottawa had a hard time getting it back.

"The old adage is a good defense is offense," said Carlyle. "If you can keep the other team in their defensive zone, then you don't have to worry about them scoring against you."

The Ducks did plenty of that. And they did plenty of hitting.

Barring some element of Ottawa's game that was totally invisible in Game 1, it seems almost certain to be a winning formula.

Contact Star columnist David Lassen at dlassen@VenturaCountyStar.com.