ANAHEIM — Less than 24 hours after losing to the Kings in a shootout at Crypto.com Arena, the Ducks were poised to help their rivals by sweeping a three-game season series against the Nashville Predators.
After falling to the Ducks twice in Tennessee, the visitors were four points back of the Kings, second in the Western Conference Wild Card race, entering Sunday’s tilt at the Honda Center.
After the early evening contest, a 4-2 defeat for the Ducks, that gap shrunk to two points thanks to Nashville’s fifth regulation-time victory on a five-game road trip.
“That’s a game we could’ve won,” Ducks head coach Greg Cronin said. “I told the team, we played them two other times and we probably played them better this game than the other two and we won them.”
Another stout and stingy effort by the Predators produced goals from Roman Josi in the second period and three in the third from Filip Forsberg, Michael McCarron and an empty-net finish for Gustav Nyquist, which was enough to offset Ducks’ lamp-lighters courtesy of Isac Lundestrom and Brett Leason.
Playing the second game of a back-to-back (Nashville beat San Jose 4-2 on Saturday), neither group appeared to suffer on the ice until the Ducks succumbed to the Predators’ physicality in the third period.
The opening 20 minutes featured heavy, sharp skating, a fight at center ice between Ducks’ center Sam Carrick and Nashville defenseman Jeremy Lauzon, but no goals.
Nashville didn’t waste time getting on the board following the first intermission, grabbing the lead a minute in when Josi connected on his 12th goal in 59 games.
A straightaway slap shot from just inside the blue line by the Predators’ defenseman zoomed over the glove of Ducks’ goaltender Lukas Dostal, who got the start the day after John Gibson’s 48-save performance against the Kings.
The 33-year-old Swiss defender scored his first career NHL goal on Dec. 10, 2011 versus Anaheim and has 27 points in 33 career regular-season games against the Ducks. The second period finish, off assists from Forsberg and Dante Fabbro, increased his points streak against the Ducks to eight games.
The home team responded at 11:55 when Lundestrom took a beautiful backhand no-look pass from Max Jones that clung to the blue line as the Swedish forward charged toward the offensive zone prior netting his third of the year low against the Predator’s No. 2 goaltender Kevin Lankinen, who stopped 29 shots.
“I like our first two periods,” Lundestrom said. “We had a couple turnovers and they got the momentum back. That definitely killed the game a little bit. We lost some pucks in important spots. Otherwise the first and second period were really good, we’ve just to continue that for 60 minutes.”
Nashville turned the screws in the third by controlling the puck in the Ducks’ defensive zone and pressuring Dostal, who made 25 saves against 28 shots.
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Forsberg’s 28th goal of the year came at 3:26 following a faceoff in the Ducks’ zone, where he created space to his right before unleashing a laser beam of a wrist shot that beat Dostal clean. The Swedish forward has 26 points in 24 games against the Ducks, including seven multi-point outings.
Nashville’s third came a little more than five minutes later, when McCarron cleaned up a saved slap shot.
The Ducks (20-35-3, 42 points) gave their fans hope, but just for a moment, when Leason’s seventh of the season cut the deficit to one at 17:36.
Twenty-two seconds later, Nashville (32-25-2, 64 points) shut the door with an empty-net finish on Nyquist’s 15th goal.
By avoiding a season sweep, the Predators have earned at least one point in 16 of their last 20 meetings against the Ducks, which fell to 2-5-0 in the latter half of back-to-backs.
“We deserved a better fate,” said Cronin, noting the Ducks four successful penalty kills. “That hurts. We played well.”