ANAHEIM — The Ducks chased another opponent and nearly caught them, falling to the Tampa Bay Lightning, 4-3, in overtime on Wednesday afternoon at Honda Center.
The Ducks lost their fourth straight game and dropped their eighth decision in the past 10, while Tampa Bay captured its fifth consecutive victory.
“They’re really tight defensively and they’ve got a great goalie, but we kept coming,” Ducks forward Jansen Harkins said. “We were pretty resilient to tie it up. It sucks that we couldn’t get it done, but I think we should be pretty proud.”
Harkins, Beckett Sennecke and Mason McTavish all scored. Lukáš Dostál made his sixth straight start and finished with 24 saves.
Nikita Kucherov scored a goal and assisted on one by Brayden Point to match the output of Darren Raddysh, who set up J.J. Moser’s marker and deposited the game-winner. Brandon Hagel had three assists and Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 26 pucks.
Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper coached his 1,000th NHL game, all with the Lightning. The former defense attorney became just the fifth coach in NHL history to guide one team through 1,000 or more matches.
Nearly three minutes had passed in an eventful overtime session when Hagel and Raddysh hooked up for the winner. Raddysh’s stretch pass to Hagel left him alone against Jackson LaCombe, Leo Carlsson and Troy Terry, all of whom he juked to dish to Raddysh as he drove the net for the deciding goal.
“It was a back-and-forth game, they’re an incredible team over there,” Hagel said. “It ended up in overtime, there were good chances at both ends and we were the last ones to make a play.”
With 6:58 remaining in regulation, the Ducks scored their third equalizer of the contest, and with the extra man. A slick flick of the stick by Pavel Mintyukov kept the puck in the zone, sending it back into McTavish. He glided forward to snipe his 10th goal of the campaign. The Ducks’ power play had gone 4 for 46 before McTavish’s tally.
“Their guys thought they had a two-on-one [rush], ‘Minty’ made a really good play and found me. I saw Vasilevskiy was a little deep [in his net], so I just put one by him there,” McTavish said.
Much as a hit post preceded the goal they allowed in the second period, an unfinished two-on-one break shorthanded by former Bolt Alex Killorn led to a power-play finish at the other end for Tampa.
Kucherov, who has 17 points in his last nine outings, hammered home a one-timer from the right circle at 8:00.
The Ducks had drawn even 3:57 into the third. McTavish pressured an exchange between Vasilevskiy and Erik Černák, with Sennecke joining the forecheck to take the puck from Černák and pop a shot past the two-time Stanley Cup champ to regain sole possession of the rookie lead with 12 goals.
Through 40 minutes, Tampa maintained its one-goal edge from the first intermission after the two sides exchanged markers in the second period.
Point reclaimed the lead after Kucherov’s seam pass from the right circle to the left point set up Max Crozier’s shot, which Point directed home calmly.
Olen Zellweger had perhaps the best chance of the first period, with Carlsson’s one-timer from Cutter Gauthier coming in the middle frame. Vasilevskiy stood tall in each instance.
The Ducks’ penalty kill did the same in the second period – and twice more in the third – withstanding pressure during the power play and for a stretch after Zellweger’s tripping penalty expired.
The Ducks leveled the score with 4:43 to play in the stanza. After Charle-Edouard D’Astous skated forward but left the puck behind, bruiser Ross Johnston made perhaps the prettiest play of his career.
His Lemieux-esque use of his reach and hands pulled Vasilevskiy out of position for Johnston to deliver a backhanded saucer pass over an outstretched Raddysh. That netted an easy backdoor goal for Harkins, the industrious forward’s third tally this season.
“We competed like it was an important game, the crowd was great, we were into it and we didn’t get discouraged when they did take the lead,” Ducks coach Joel Quenneville said.
The Ducks again gave up the game’s first goal, though it required more time and more attempts than usual.
The Lightning appeared to get the offense going when Point tapped the puck home. But the Ducks challenged successfully that he entered the zone offside, nullifying the goal.
Some last-ditch defending, principally from Jacob Trouba, negated another seemingly surefire attack from the Bolts, who finally opened the scoring with 6:30 left in the first period.
Moser, the Swiss defender who signed a $54 million contract extension on Saturday, crept from the left point to the faceoff dot. He received the puck and curled it across Ian Moore to smoke a shot far side.
“It kind of felt like a playoff game,” McTavish said. “Every mistake really mattered. It’s fun to play in those games, and, obviously, it would have been better if we came out on top.”