ANAHEIM — The Ducks mounted three different leads in regulation and finished off a 4-3 victory over the Ottawa Senators in a shootout at Honda Center on Sunday
Frank Vatrano scored two goals and assisted on a third by Jackson LaCombe. Troy Terry helped set up all three tallies — he has seven assists in his past four games — and scored the winning goal in the shootout. Lukáš Dostál compiled 29 saves.
Brady Tkachuk matched Vatrano’s goal total with two. Linus Ullmark came up with 32 stops.
No Sens scored in the shootout, but two Ducks did. Terry cashed in after opening up Ullmark to slide the puck through his five hole before Trevor Zegras dazzled by shifting his skating speed and disguising his release during a conversion that sealed the victory.
Sunday’s often free-flowing action unfolded in contrast to matches against both these two teams’ prior opponent, the Kings, who beat the Ducks on Friday and Ottawa on Saturday.
“We’ve got the skill to play an open game. They’re a very good rush hockey team and they’re going to be up and down the ice,” Terry said. “We were managing the game a little differently than, say, when we were playing L.A. last game. ... As a young team, it’s just a matter of learning how to play in those skilled type of games.”
Overtime featured frenetic action, punctuated by Zegras’ breakaway, which led directly to scoring chances for Terry and Pavel Mintyukov.
The final 20 minutes began tied and remained that way for all but 69 seconds as the teams exchanged goals between the 4:37 and 5:46 marks of the third period.
Ottawa tied the game at 3 when Cousins transported the puck across most of the ice before giving it up to Michael Amadio and driving to the net, where he got position on Mintyukov to tap Amadio’s pass through Dostál.
The Ducks took their third lead of the night when Terry’s pass through a sea of white jerseys found its intended target, Vatrano, in the slot. Vatrano’s second goal of the night also represented his sixth of the season and his fourth in four games after starting the season with 13 straight games without a goal against a goalie. Terry joked that Vatrano was once again “fun to be around,” now that he was scoring again.
“It’s a huge relief. There were some games at the beginning of the season where I felt like I let my team down because I need to score goals to help our team,” Vatrano said.
The Senators scored the second period’s lone goal despite the Ducks out-shooting and out-chancing them. The hosts also had stronger quality opportunities, most notably a point-blank try from Terry during a late-period power play.
A mere 37 seconds into the middle frame, Tkachuk scored his second goal of the night thanks to some Ducks discombobulation.
This time, Brian Dumoulin pinched just as his partner Drew Helleson was going for a line change and forward Isac Lundeström had the puck poked away in the Ottawa zone. It went to Thomas Chabot, who feathered a slow lead pass for Tkachuk, who still had enough time on his breakaway for a shot and a successful followup.