ANAHEIM — In their biggest victory of the season to date, the Ducks dominated early and rallied late to beat the NHL-leading Winnipeg Jets, 3-2, on Wednesday night at Honda Center.
The Ducks had won just one of their previous six games while the Jets entered the match with the league’s best point total and best goal differential. That didn’t stop the Ducks from dominating possession, scoring chances and nearly every barometer for most of a game that saw them circle the wagons and surmount a 2-1 deficit with two goals in the final 4:46.
Frank Vatrano scored two goals and assisted on Troy Terry’s game-winner with 24.2 seconds showing on the game clock. Captain Radko Gudas earned assists on both of Vatrano’s goals. Lukáš Dostál had 21 saves and aided a clutch penalty kill shortly before Terry deposited the game-winner as the Ducks won consecutive games for the first time in nearly a month (Nov. 19).
Gabriel Vilardi and Mark Scheifele each scored a goal for Winnipeg. Backup goalie Eric Comrie made 28 saves.
After being hectored for two periods, the more familiar Jets showed up in the closing frame, sustaining pressure early and tilting the ice in their favor early before the Ducks drew even late and then scored in the dying embers of the tilt.
After a monstrous hit by Jacob Trouba helped break up the Jets’ possession, the Ducks went the other way and forechecked aggressively, culminating in Vatrano’s disruption of Haydn Fleury’s pass, which went directly to Terry, who waited out Comrie to sweep in the winner with 24.2 seconds remaining. Terry who had been engaged but not rewarded on the score sheet to that point, has 13 points in his past 11 games.
With 4:46 left in regulation, Vatrano let a shot rip from the blue line that bounced off the ice surface and up into the net. Whether Vatrano called “bank” or not, it was his second goal of the game, ninth of the season and his seventh in his past 11 appearances.
Early in the third period of a tie game, the Ducks weathered a pair of defensive breakdowns thanks to Dostál, but could not survive a third as the Jets took their first lead of the game with 15:47 to play.
Kyle Connor’s intrepid foray began behind his own net and continued as he broke down the Ducks through the neutral zone, skating to the right circle and dishing deftly to Scheifele for a one-timer.
The Ducks’ momentum from the first period carried over into the second but a Ross Johnston roughing penalty opened the door for an equalizer.
Just nine seconds after Johnston was sent to the box for throwing a jab, the NHL’s top-ranked power play knotted the score at 1-1, 24 seconds past the game’s midpoint. Nikolaj Ehlers, who played for the first time since Nov. 29, sent a puck into the crease that first struck Vilardi in the leg and then was easily pushed across the line by the former King, who had gotten early position on Gudas. Vilardi’s 14 goals put him on pace to cruise past his career high of 23.
Seven seconds after Ryan Strome and Jackson LaCombe pieced together the kind of successive-scoring-chance sequence that typified the Ducks’ start to the game but not the season, the Ducks finally broke through. A point shot from Gudas was tipped home by Vatrano to open the scoring.
The first period brought 20 of the best minutes of the Ducks’ season as they registered the first 10 shots on goal of the game and had tripled the Jets’ shot total, 12-4, at the first intermission. Yet either Comrie or the posts flanking him had the answer for all the Ducks’ bids, including three of the frame’s four high-danger chances recorded by Natural Stat Trick.
More to come on this story.