ANAHEIM — Trailing by four goals 23 minutes into their game against the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Ducks had the visitors right where they wanted them.
Or so they might have thought before ultimately falling short, 7-4.
No team in the NHL has engineered more comeback wins than the Ducks this season, and for one period they leaned into that mojo on Wednesday night at the Honda Center.
Booed off the ice following a meandering, sloppy first period, the Ducks turned the tables and exuberant cheers greeted them leading into the next intermission, after a 4-0 deficit had been wiped away thanks to a quartet of Ducks goals during an 11-minute stretch of the second period.
With the game up for grabs, the Ducks could not complete what would have been an outstanding start to a stretch of nine consecutive games in California.
But a day after getting thumped, 5-1, by the Kings, the last-place team in the Metropolitan Division stormed out of the gates in the third period, scoring three again to close the last West Coast trip of the season for Columbus with topsy-turvy 7-4 victory.
Blue Jackets forward Johnny Gaudreau had a goal disallowed against the Kings on Tuesday. The following night, he contributed early, assisting on defenseman Zach Werenski’s opener at 3:32 before delivering the Blue Jackets’ second goal six minutes later on a simple deke to the left of Ducks goaltender John Gibson.
Werenski tapped in another at 18:30 for his fourth goal of the season, forcing the Ducks to chase down what felt like a hopeless cause.
The disappointment in the building deepened when Ducks goalie John Gibson mishandled the puck behind his own net early in the second period, giving Blue Jackets forward Alex Texier an opportunity to sling it to the front where Sean Kuraly tapped in his eighth goal of the season.
Off the resumption of play at center ice, forwards mixed it up as the Ducks’ Ross Johnston tussled with Columbus’ Mathieu Olivier. Neither landed a decisive blow, but the dustup was celebrated by both benches and lifted the energy in the stands.
Then Troy Terry broke the seal for the Ducks at 9:07 when he carried the puck into the Columbus zone and zipped a wrist shot over goalie Daniil Tarasov’s right shoulder.
Mason McTavish made it 4-2 at 16:05, shoving defenseman Adam Boqvist out of the way while assists from Terry and Pavel Mintyukov set him up from point blank.
The Blue Jackets (18-27-10, 46 points) replaced Tarasov with Elvis Merzlikins, who allowed a handful of goals to the Kings, but that didn’t stem the Ducks’ tide.
McTavish soon netted his second, again from Mintyukov and Terry, beating Merzlikins between the legs at 18:49.
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Less than a minute later, Alex Killhorn sent the arena into a frenzy when his seventh goal of the season leveled the score at 4-4 thanks to Mintyukov’s third assist of the game plus a well-placed pass from Leo Carlsson.
Columbus, however, did not concede again and the Ducks’ rally fell short of a league-best 11th comeback.
With Tarasov back in net for the Blue Jackets, a chippy, high-intensity third frame yielded three more goals for the visitors.
Yegor Chinakhov preceded Kurlay’s second of the night, and a short-handed empty-net finish by Boone Jenner closed the scoring.
The Ducks (20-34-2, 42 points) face the Kings on Saturday at Crypto.com Arena, and return to Honda Center on Sunday against Nashville.
More to come on this story.