ANAHEIM — The Ducks poured in three consecutive goals to upend the Montreal Canadiens 3-2 at Honda Center on Sunday afternoon.

They have now won four of their past five games while the Habs slipped out of a wild-card spot in the course of losing five straight. The Ducks moved to 21-0-2 when breaking the three-goal barrier this season, a stat that’s all the more staggering given that they’ve won a modest 22 games overall.

Mason McTavish, Frank Vatrano and Alex Killorn each lit the lamp for the Ducks. Killorn tacked on an assist and Leo Carlsson had two helpers in his first multipoint showing since Nov. 15. Leading point producer Troy Terry was a late scratch (illness), moving Vatrano to right wing and elevating Trevor Zegras to the top line. Lukas Dostal stopped 21 shots, including all 13 he faced in the final 40 minutes of the match, to earn a win in his Czech countryman Radko Gudas’ 800th career game.

Joel Armia and Christian Dvorak tallied for Montreal. Samuel Montbembault had 19 saves.

The Ducks, who allowed four consecutive goals during a 4-1 loss in Calgary on Thursday, flipped that script as well as the one from a forgettable first period on Sunday.

“When you have these early starts, you kind of have to force yourself to get into the games,” said Killorn, who scored the deciding goal. “It took us a little while, but we got into it.”

Though a second intermission deadlock and an unsuccessful Ducks power play to open the third period left the result up in the air, they earned their first lead with 8:49 to play off Carlsson’s second assist and Killorn’s second point.

After receiving the puck from Carlsson, Killorn strode into the right faceoff circle, where he and McTavish outnumbered Arber Xhekaj. Killorn proceeded to the dot and launched a shot off the far post and in for his 11th goal of the campaign.

“Coming into the zone, I thought that their D was gonna step (toward) me, and (McTavish) was driving through, so I was looking to hit (McTavish), but they just kind of gave me a ton of room, so I just decided to take it,” Killorn said.

Following a quiet first period, the Ducks got their druthers in the second. Initially, they evened out possession and territory before breaking through with two tallies in 40 seconds, at the 13:37 and 14:17 marks.

Vatrano tied the game after a sequence he started with an outlet pass from the defensive blue line to Zegras at the red line. Zegras one-touched the puck to Ryan Strome at the offensive blue line, where he scooted forward and found a trailing Vatrano unmarked in the slot. Vatrano fired in his 16th goal of 2024-25, tying him with Terry for the team lead.

The Ducks had halved their deficit with an effort that involved one of the team’s hottest scorers and one of its coldest. Carlsson earned his first point in seven games as he blazed across three zones before later recovering the puck, sliding it to McTavish below the goal line and gliding toward the front of the net. There, he set a screen for a Killorn shot.

Carlsson was joined on the doorstep by McTavish, who tipped Killorn’s attempt in for his seventh goal in six games and 13th of the season.

Carlsson’s contributions to the goal hardly went unnoticed by its scorer.

“He was flying. He was awesome today,” McTavish said. “He’s such a great player, every time he gets the puck with speed, good things happen.”

Sunday’s early start time may have been news to the Ducks during a first period in which their opportunities consisted mostly of scraps and crumbs, while Montreal feasted on odd-man rushes and special-teams goals.

The Ducks had some zone time but were unable to generate any high-danger chances, while Montreal had five in the period, per Natural Stat Trick and the naked eye alike.

Early on, Dostál made a ten-bell save after Juraj Slafkovský played Moses in the neutral zone, parting the Ducks’ orange sea and disintegrating their structure to set up sniper Cole Caufield for a one-timer that had a trail of smoke behind it.