ANAHEIM — Even without Troy Terry, the Ducks nearly pulled off another comeback, as they forced overtime but fell just short in a 3-2 loss to the Calgary Flames on Tuesday night at Honda Center.
Alex Killorn and Mason McTavish had a goal apiece. John Gibson had 30 saves. The Ducks’ leading scorer, Terry, missed the match as he and his wife Dani were to welcome their second child. The Ducks have earned nine of their past 12 possible points.
MacKenzie Weegar, who turned 31 on Tuesday, scored a goal and assisted on another by Nazem Kadri before Jonathan Huberdeau tallied in overtime. Joel Hanley tacked on two assists, and former Tustin resident Dustin Wolf made 26 saves.
A wild end-to-end sequence in overtime saw Calgary’s Martin Pospisil’s clutch backcheck send Calgary the other way for a frantic fire drill in the Ducks’ zone. The Flames’ pressure led to an interference penalty by Pavel Mintyukov, allowing Calgary to cash in four-on-three opportunity.
Anticlimax reigned as after an initial spectacular save by Gibson, a bad bounce off the end boards from Jacob Trouba’s clearing attempt served up a tap-in goal at the side of the net for Huberdeau, 2:05 into overtime.
Leo Carlsson began the third period with a partial breakaway that was denied by Wolf’s blocker. Wolf, a former junior King, made a big stop on McTavish’s deflection in the second.
The Ducks did break through, however, on the power play, with their fifth goal in 48 chances proving timely, tying the game 7:36 into third period. McTavish set up in the slot to redirect a high shot from Cutter Gauthier for McTavish’s sixth goal of the season and his second on the power play.
With just under eight minutes to play, Jackson LaCombe barreled into Blake Coleman at the back post, selling out to knock him off a rebound that would have been a near-certain goal. That was the most prominent among the plays that sent the game to overtime.
The second period saw the teams exchange goals at the 8:34 and 12:44 marks after Drew Helleson’s major penalty and game misconduct for kneeing Connor Zary, who did not return to the ice. Helleson was assessed a five-minute penalty and the response from Calgary’s Jakob Pelletier earned him two minutes in the box.
Just as the four-on-four portion was about to expire, the Ducks equalized. Isac Lundeström found Killorn in the slot for a rising wrist shot from just inside the right circle that became his eighth goal of the year and his first in nine games.
An offensive-zone faceoff win by Kadri allowed him to slip behind the defense and receive a silky pass from Weegar for a redirection goal at the back post, after which he pointed to his mother Sue in the suite that the Flames filled for their moms’ trip.
The Ducks allowed the first nine shots on goal of the match but ended up with only a 12-11 deficit in shots through 20 minutes. That shot, however, was the difference, as Calgary scored a Rube Goldberg machine of a goal with 55.9 seconds on the first-period clock.
Hanley’s low-flying wrist shot appeared to nick the stick of Ducks forward Ross Johnston before it was tipped by Coleman and banked in off the body of Weegar.
The Ducks also had a first-period power play, which bore no fruit. They are 4 for 46 on the power play since Dec. 2, though they have two man-advantage goals in the last three games following a 1-for-31 drought over the previous three weeks.
Killorn pointed last month to the absence of Trevor Zegras as a source of listlessness on the power play. He last played on Dec. 4, just six minutes of a match versus Vegas in which he tore his meniscus. The Ducks had been scoring at a 15.7% clip with Zegras and now had produced a meager 8.7%, the second-worst rate in the NHL since Dec. 2 entering the game.
More to come on this story.