By ERIK ERLENDSSON The Associated Press
TAMPA, Fla. — On a season-long road trip that has not gone the way the Ducks had hoped, they salvaged a point by reaching overtime for the 12th time this season.
Jake Guentzel scored the only goal for either team in the shootout and the Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Ducks, 4-3, on Thursday night.
Brayden Point, Anthony Cirelli and Guentzel scored for Tampa Bay during regulation, while Andrei Vasilevskiy finished with 34 saves and stopped one more in the shootout, when the Ducks missed the target twice. Tampa Bay (24-6-3, 51 points) improved to 4-1-1 in its past six games and 14-6-1 at home.
Troy Terry, Robby Fabbri and Leo Carlsson scored for the Ducks (18-21-6, 42 points), who fell to 1-3-1 on a six-game trip that concludes on Saturday against the Florida Panthers. Lukas Dostal stopped 32 shots for the Ducks.
Tampa Bay held a 3-2 lead heading into the third period before Fabbri tipped in Jacob Trouba’s point shot at 9:53 of the third period to send the game to overtime.
Dostal had stopped a pair of Brandon Hagel short-handed breakaways on the same Ducks power play earlier in the third period to keep the Ducks within a goal, and Fabbri scored his equalizer about eight minutes later.
Both teams brought 3-4-1 January records into the game, and the Ducks scored first when Terry put in a caroming puck at 6:03 of the first period, with Ryan Strome and Brian Dumoulin drawing assists. Terry’s team-best 15th goal of the season tied him with Scott Niedermayer and Adam Henrique for 10th on the Ducks’ career points list (264).
The Lightning’s power-play unit tied the score when Cirelli scored at 14:19 of the first period off assists from Hagel and Victor Hedman.
The Lightning dropped down to five defensemen when Erik Cernak left just 34 seconds into his first shift, struggling after a hard spill during a puck battle. Cernak did not return.
Early in the second period, Kucherov swiftly whipped a pass to Guentzel, who scored his 10th power-play goal of the season at 2:51.
A hard forecheck by Mason McTavish behind Vasilevskiy resulted in Carlsson finding the net for the second tie at 11:26 of the second period.
Point stopped in front of Dostal and put in his team-high 26th goal four minutes later for the Lightning’s second advantage but Dostal was strong in the third, buying time for Fabbri to bring them even again.
Guentzel beat Dostal between the pads to open the shootout.
NOTES
Trouba recorded just his third point in 20 games since joining the Ducks on Dec. 9 after assisting on Fabbri’s goal. … Hedman became the first player in Lightning history to record 600 career assists and just the fourth Swedish-born defenseman in the NHL to reach the mark joining Nicklas Lidstrom, Borje Salming and Erik Karlsson. … Nikita Kucherov had two assists, raising his total with Tampa Bay to 598. … The Ducks’ Pavel Mintyukov had an assist in his 100th career game.
UP NEXT
The Ducks play at the Florida Panthers on Saturday at 3 p.m. PT.