ANAHEIM \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
The Ducks lost their fourth straight game and dropped their eighth decision in the past 10, while Tampa Bay captured its fifth consecutive victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re really tight defensively and they\u2019ve got a great goalie, but we kept coming,\u201d Ducks forward Jansen Harkins said. \u201cWe were pretty resilient to tie it up. It sucks that we couldn\u2019t get it done, but I think we should be pretty proud.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harkins, Beckett Sennecke and Mason McTavish all scored. Luk\u00e1\u0161 Dost\u00e1l made his sixth straight start and finished with 24 saves.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s marker and deposited the game-winner. Brandon Hagel had three assists and Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 26 pucks.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Nearly three minutes had passed in an eventful overtime session when Hagel and Raddysh hooked up for the winner. Raddysh\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a back-and-forth game, they\u2019re an incredible team over there,\u201d Hagel said. \u201cIt ended up in overtime, there were good chances at both ends and we were the last ones to make a play.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019 power play had gone 4 for 46 before McTavish\u2019s tally.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir guys thought they had a two-on-one [rush], \u2018Minty\u2019 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,\u201d McTavish said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Kucherov, who has 17 points in his last nine outings, hammered home a one-timer from the right circle at 8:00.<\/p>\n
The Ducks had drawn even 3:57 into the third. McTavish pressured an exchange between Vasilevskiy and Erik \u010cern\u00e1k, with Sennecke joining the forecheck to take the puck from \u010cern\u00e1k and pop a shot past the two-time Stanley Cup champ to regain sole possession of the rookie lead with 12 goals.<\/p>\n
Through 40 minutes, Tampa maintained its one-goal edge from the first intermission after the two sides exchanged markers in the second period.<\/p>\n
Point reclaimed the lead after Kucherov\u2019s seam pass from the right circle to the left point set up Max Crozier\u2019s shot, which Point directed home calmly.<\/p>\n
Olen Zellweger had perhaps the best chance of the first period, with Carlsson\u2019s one-timer from Cutter Gauthier coming in the middle frame. Vasilevskiy stood tall in each instance.<\/p>\n
The Ducks\u2019 penalty kill did the same in the second period \u2013 and twice more in the third \u2013 withstanding pressure during the power play and for a stretch after Zellweger\u2019s tripping penalty expired.<\/p>\n
The Ducks leveled the score with 4:43 to play in the stanza. After Charle-Edouard D\u2019Astous skated forward but left the puck behind, bruiser Ross Johnston made perhaps the prettiest play of his career.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s third tally this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe competed like it was an important game, the crowd was great, we were into it and we didn\u2019t get discouraged when they did take the lead,\u201d Ducks coach Joel Quenneville said.<\/p>\n
The Ducks again gave up the game\u2019s first goal, though it required more time and more attempts than usual.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt kind of felt like a playoff game,\u201d McTavish said. \u201cEvery mistake really mattered. It\u2019s fun to play in those games, and, obviously, it would have been better if we came out on top.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ANAHEIM \u2014 The Ducks chased another opponent and nearly caught them, falling to the Tampa Bay Lightning, 4-3,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,404,127],"class_list":{"0":"post-115699","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-headlines","10":"tag-anaheim-news","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}