PHILADELPHIA — Trevor Zegras scored twice for the Philadelphia Flyers in his first game against his former team to lead them to a 5-2 win over the Ducks on Tuesday night.
Cutter Gauthier scored his 20th goal of the season for the Ducks in his second game in Philadelphia against the franchise he forced to trade him — and turned him into one of Philly’s biggest sports villains — as the Ducks lost their seventh straight game.
On a night the Flyers honored late founder Ed Snider, the arena was packed with fans just happy to root again for a team in playoff contention.
Flyers fans mostly showed up to boo — and profanely chant — at Gauthier. They roared in the second period when Garnet Hathaway cleanly crushed Gauthier into the boards.
The Flyers were forced to trade Gauthier, the fifth overall pick in the 2022 draft, a year ago because he wouldn’t sign, train or even communicate with the Flyers. Gauthier has never made his exact excuse for wanting out publicly clear — just one more reason for Flyers fans to jeer him like a pro wrestling bad guy.
There was a scary moment early in the second when Ross Johnston leveled Jamie Drysdale — who the Flyers acquired for Gauthier — and the defenseman was face down on the ice for several minutes. The stretcher came out but Drysdale was eventually helped up and walked with assistance to the locker room.
Johnston was hit with five minutes for interference and given a game misconduct.
The two teams made another big trade with each over the summer when the Flyers landed Zegras once Anaheim concluded he no longer fit the Ducks’ roster as they attempt to end their seven-year playoff drought.
Zegras — who followed Gauthier with two straight goals in the first period for a 2-1 lead —will be a restricted free agent this summer. The Flyers expect him to be a key part in their ascent in the East standings.
Cam York and Travis Sanheim also scored for the Flyers and Nikita Gregbenkin added an empty-netter. Alex Killorn had a goal for the Ducks.
RALEIGH, N.C. — Jalen Chatfield’s first goal of the season was a tiebreaker and goalie Frederik Andersen snapped a personal nine-game losing streak as the Carolina Hurricanes beat the Ducks 5-2 on Thursday night.
Chatfield, a defenseman playing in his 300th career game, scored during the Hurricanes’ three-goal second period. He also had an assist.
Logan Stankoven and Taylor Hall each had a goal and an assist, and Mark Jankowski and Jackson Blake also scored for the Hurricanes (27-14-3), who won their third straight. Andersen made 11 saves for his first victory since Nov. 6. He had gone 0-7-2 during his winless stretch.
The Ducks had leads in each of the first two periods.
Poehling scored with 6:42 left in the first period. Jankowski tied the score on Carolina’s 17th shot of the game at 8:56 of the second period, with the puck swept into the goal by Ducks defenseman Drew Helleson’s skate.
Granlund shot wide through the crease on an open net, but pretty much stayed in the same position and then tapped in a pass from Mason McTavish for the Ducks’ 2-1 lead with 6:42 left in the second. Stankoven scored for the third game in a row, taking a pass from Taylor Hall on a two-man rush to pull the Hurricanes even.
Chatfield’s goal came with 3:52 remaining in the second period. Carolina outshot the Ducks 18-3 in the period.
Blake and Hall scored in the third period, with Hall’s goal into an empty net.
Winger Troy Terry, who co-leads the Ducks with 42 points, missed a game for the first time this season because of an upper-body injury.
Up next for the Ducks: Close out a four-game trip at Buffalo on Saturday.
WASHINGTON — Justin Sourdif scored his first NHL hat trick and added two assists and the Washington Capitals beat the Ducks 7-4 on Monday night.
Alex Ovechkin scored twice, Ryan Leonard had a goal and an assist, John Carlson also scored and Connor McMichael had four assists for the Capitals, who ended a two-game slide. Charlie Lindgren made 41 saves in the win.
Kreider opened the scoring just 6:33 into the first period, ending a 15-game goal drought.
Sourdif evened the score, firing home a drop pass from Connor McMichael in the slot. Three minutes later, the rookie struck again, beating Mrazek glove side to give Washington (22-15-6) a 2-1 lead going into the second.
Sourdif picked up where he left off, finding Ryan Leonard, who banked in a shot off Mrazek to make it 3-1. Just 1:36 later, Leonard returned the favor, setting up Sourdif for a tap-in for his third goal of the game. Ovechkin then rifled home a wrister from the left circle to end a four-game goal drought.
Sourdif is the ninth rookie in franchise history to get a hat trick and the first since Jan. 13, 2006, when Ovechkin did it at Anaheim.
The Ducks (21-18-3) had a furious rally in the third, outshooting Washington 17-5.
The Capitals were without Tom Wilson, who was named to Canada’s Olympic roster on Wednesday, and Aliaksei Protas, who are listed as day to day.
Danila Yurov scored twice, Quinn Hughes had four assists and the Minnesota Wild beat the Ducks 5-2 on Friday night.
Kirill Kaprizov, Yakov Trenin and Nico Sturm also scored for the Wild, who earned a point for the fifth straight game (3-0-2). Filip Gustavsson stopped 26 shots.
Minnesota is 22-4-4 in its last 30 games, and 8-1-2 since acquiring Hughes, the 2024 Norris Trophy winner, in a blockbuster with Vancouver on Dec. 12.
Yurov put the game out of reach when he redirected Hughes’ shot past Dostal for a 4-1 lead 3:21 into the third. Sturm’s shot from the left circle made it 5-1 with 4:58 left.
Dostal made eight saves during a pair of penalty kills in the first seven minutes of the second, but he caught an unlucky break when the Wild scored on a double-deflection to take a 2-0 lead at the 8:10 mark.
Hughes, one of eight Minnesota players named to Winter Olympic teams Friday, sent a shot from the blue line that hit Trenin’s stick and Yurov’s right skate before trickling into the net.
The Ducks grabbed some momentum when Mason McTavish’s faceoff swipe from the left circle landed on the stick of Sennecke, whose snap shot beat Gustavsson stick-side to cut the lead to 2-1. Sennecke leads NHL rookies with 13 goals.
But Minnesota pushed it to 3-1 with 5:15 left in the second when Trenin took a pass from Hughes in the right circle and rifled a shot past Dostal.
Minnesota took advantage of Alex Killorn’s tripping penalty, needing only nine seconds to score on the power play for a 1-0 lead 5:39 into the first. Dostal blocked Hughes’ slap shot from the point, but Kaprizov banged a shot past Dostal after a scramble in front of the net for his 24th goal.
Up next for the Ducks: at Washington on Monday night.
Darren Raddysh scored midway through overtime, and the Tampa Bay Lightning blew three one-goal leads before beating the Ducks 4-3 on Wednesday for their fifth consecutive victory.
Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper celebrated his 1,000th regular-season game in charge with his 595th victory as the longest-tenured bench boss in the NHL. The Lightning’s coach since March 2013 has also led them in 155 playoff games, won two championships and reached four Stanley Cup Finals.
Nikita Kucherov had a goal and an assist as the Lightning skated off with a win in the opener of their three-game California trip when Raddysh converted a pass from Brandon Hagel, who had three assists.
J.J. Moser and Brayden Point also scored for Tampa Bay, and Andrei Vasilevskiy made 24 saves.
Mason McTavish tied it on a power play with 6:58 left in regulation for the Ducks, who have lost four straight and eight of 10. Jansen Harkins and Beckett Sennecke also scored, and Lukas Dostal stopped 24 shots as the Ducks earned a point for only the second time in six games.
Moser opened the scoring in the first period with his first goal since agreeing to an eight-year, $54-million contract extension last weekend.
The Ducks scored their first two goals off turnovers, with the 19-year-old Sennecke getting the 12th of his rookie season early in the third period.
Kucherov scored his 18th goal on a cross-ice pass from Hagel during a power play four minutes later, but the Ducks evened it again when Pavel Mintyukov made an exceptional play at the blue line to set up McTavish for his 10th goal.
The Ducks announced during the game that forward Frank Vatrano will be out for about six weeks with a broken shoulder incurred in a loss to the Kings last Saturday.
Up next for the Ducks: vs. Minnesota at Honda Center on Friday.
Macklin Celebrini became the third player with 60 points this season with a goal and two assists in the San José Sharks’ 5-4 victory over the Ducks on Monday night.
Mario Ferraro, Igor Chernyshov, William Eklund and Zach Ostapchuk also scored for the Sharks, who earned their second win since the holiday break despite getting outshot 43-13. Yaroslav Askarov made 38 saves.
Troy Terry scored two goals, Cutter Gauthier got his 19th goal and Pavel Mintyukov also scored for the Ducks, who have lost three straight and seven of nine while falling out of first place in the Pacific Division. Lukas Dostal allowed four goals on nine shots before Petr Mrazek replaced him during the second period.
With his seventh multipoint game of December, Celebrini needed just 39 games to get 60 points — the most scored by a teenager before New Year’s Day in the NHL. He also extended his points streak to eight games.
Celebrini left the ice after getting hit in the face by a deflected puck in the third period, but returned several minutes later.
Alexander Wennberg set up San José’s first two goals with exceptional passes, but Anaheim scored off an atrocious turnover by Askarov. He gave away the puck behind his net to Nikita Nesterenko, who found an uncontested Terry.
Celebrini scored his 21st goal late in the first, and he set up Chernyshov’s second career goal in the second. Eklund chased Dostal with his 10th goal after another clever pass by Celebrini.
Gauthier scored late in the second before setting up Mintyukov early in the third.
San José scored on two of its three shots in the second period, and it didn’t put the puck on Anaheim’s net in the first 11 minutes of the third. Ostapchuk still made it 5-3 on a long tip with 6:13 to play, but Terry scored moments later with Mrazek pulled.
R.J. Prewitt has been a Ducks fan since the first puck dropped in Anaheim, so he’s known good times and bad.
He was there when the team won the Stanley Cup in 2007, for example, and when it took another final to a seventh game four seasons earlier. But he was also there through each of the last seven seasons, when the Ducks never placed higher than sixth in the Pacific Division and finished a combined 74 games under .500.
“It’s my team,” said Prewitt, wearing a white-and-orange Ducks’ sweater as he waited to enter the Crypto.com Arena for Saturday night’s game with the Kings. “I’m going to have faith no matter what.”
That faith is getting another stern test this month. Because after entering December atop the division standings for the first time in more than a decade, the Ducks have lost six of their last eight, with the most ignominious loss coming Saturday in a 6-1 thrashing by their neighborhood rivals and winger Alex Laferriere, who got his first career hat trick.
Ducks left wing Alex Killorn skates with the puck during a loss to Kings Saturday at Crypto.com Arena.
(Katie Chin / Associated Press)
For the Kings, the season-high six goals comes at the end of a slide that had seen them lose six of their last seven, averaging less than two goals a game over that stretch.
Laferriere scored more than that by himself Saturday.
The Kings’ first two goals, from Drew Doughty and Trevor Moore, came in the first four minutes. Laferriere got his first midway through the first period and when Quinton Byfield scored on a power play just before the intermission, the Kings took a 4-0 lead into the locker room at the break.
For the Ducks, who have been plagued by slow starts — 11 of their 21 wins came in games in which they trailed; only the Philadelphia Flyers have more — that deficit was too much to overcome.
“That’s unacceptable,” coach Joel Quenneville said. “You’re not going to make the playoffs being at that level. So we’ve got to make sure that we recapture that feeling of what it takes to be consistent.”
Ducks coach Joel Quenneville yells instructions to his players during a game against the Chicago Blackhawks on Oct. 19.
(Paul Beaty / Associated Press)
Yet despite Saturday’s loss, the Ducks and their fans still have a lot of positives to celebrate — especially given the team’s recent history.
The Ducks’ 21 wins are still most in the division; they didn’t get their 21st win until Jan. 28th last season. And their 130 goals through 38 games — an average of nearly 3 ½ a night — rank fourth in the NHL. They were in the bottom three in scoring in each of the last three seasons.
But what had been the most remarkable turnaround in the league through the first three months has suddenly hit a rough patch, challenging the narrative that new coach Quenneville had finally taken the team from pretenders to contenders.
“Well, we’ve got to prove it,” Quenneville said after Saturday’s humiliation, the Ducks’ most lopsided loss of the season. “We can talk about [how] we want to be a harder-working team this season. But the game tonight didn’t indicate that at all.
“The tenaciousness and the relentless has to go be part of our identity. But we can’t talk about it. We’ve got to prove that.”
Quenneville has been here before. In 2008, he took over a young Chicago Blackhawks team that hadn’t been to the playoffs in five seasons and guided it to the conference finals. A year later, it won the Stanley Cup.
Then in 2019, he took over a young Florida Panthers’ team and led it to the franchise’s first playoff appearance in three seasons.
Both teams had to learn to win, had to believe they could win, before they actually did so. Now Quenneville’s young Ducklings are having their beliefs tested by their worst eight-game stretch of the season.
“I’ve never been on a winning-record team in the NHL. And I’m not the only guy,” said 22-year-old center Mason McTavish, one of six Ducks younger than 23. “It’s a learning curve for sure.
“But at the same time we know how good we are. And this last six, eight games, it’s not been up to our standard. We’ve taken a huge step this year. But that’s not our end goal. We want to make the playoffs. We want to win the Stanley Cup.”
The Ducks will have to become a lot more consistent to have a chance to make that happen. Because while they’re one of the league’s top scoring teams, only the St. Louis Blues have allowed more goals than the Ducks, who have a minus-2 goal differential. And they’ve been outscored 34-19 in their last eight games.
The slump, then, is looming as a test of character and resolve. At a similar point in Quenneville’s first season in Chicago, the Blackhawks lost five times in an eight-game stretch. But they rebounded by winning nine of their next 12 and never looked back.
McTavish, who had his team’s only goal Saturday, said the Ducks have to do the same thing if they hope to show the playoffs are now a realistic goal for a franchise that hasn’t had a winning record in seven seasons.
Ducks goaltender Lukas Dostal is congratulated by Nikita Nesterenko and Mason McTavish after blocking a shot by Panthers center Evan Rodrigues to win during a shootout on Oct. 28 in Sunrise, Fla.
(Lynne Sladky / Associated Press)
“We have to come out the next game and really prove to ourselves that we can play with the top teams in the league,” he said. “And beat them.”
The Ducks long-suffering supporters are also ready for the pain of the last seven seasons to ease.
“Yes, yes, yes. I believe,” said Daniel Núñez of Bakersfield who, like Prewitt, has been a fan from the first season. “We have a good shot, I think, to win the Pacific Division. We have a really good team.”
“Whatever they’re doing,” Prewitt agreed “I’m there with them.”
The Kings and Ducks backed into Saturday’s rivalry game at Crypto.com Arena.
The Kings came out of the NHL’s three-day holiday break having lost six of their last seven, scoring just 11 goals over that span. Only two teams in the Western Conference have been worst in December.
The Ducks hadn’t been much better, though, having won just two of their last seven to give up their lead in the Pacific Division. But the league rules said somebody had to win Saturday and that proved to be the Kings, who rode a four-goal first period and Alex Laferriere’s first career hat trick to a dominant 6-1 victory that wasn’t nearly as close as the final score indicated.
Drew Doughty put the Kings in front to stay just three minutes after the opening faceoff, finding open ice on the edge of the crease, where he took a pass from Quinton Byfield and deflected it past Ducks goalie Lukas Dostal. The second assist on the goal went to former Duck Corey Perry.
Trevor Moore doubled the lead less than a minute later, redirecting in a feed from Brian Dumoulin in the left circle. Ducks coach Joel Quenneville responded by calling a 30-second timeout in an effort to settle his team.
That didn’t work, with Laferriere blasting a one-timer by Dostal from just outside the crease to make it 3-0 with 9:39 left in the first period. When Byfield scored on a power play in the final minute, the Kings had their first four-goal period of the season and their first four-goal game in nearly three weeks.
After being booed off the ice at the end of their last game, a 3-2 loss to Seattle on Wednesday, the Kings left to cheers for the first intermission.
The Ducks finally got on the board when Mason McTavish scored on the power play midway through the second period. They worked hard for that goal, outshooting the Kings 12-1 in the period, yet coming away with just the one score.
Laferriere wound up matching that less than five minutes into the third period, scoring on a breakaway to give him the third multi-goal game of his career and his first this season. Dumoulin and Anze Kopitar both got their second assists on the goal.
And Laferriere wasn’t done, scoring his 10th goal on a one-timer from the high slot at 13:15 of the final period. The six goals for the Kings matched their season high and was one short of what they had scored in their last four games combined.
Brydon Carse takes two wickets in three deliveries, as Michael Neser and Mitchell Starc are both dismissed for a duck to leave Australia 121-9 on day two of the fourth Ashes Test in Melbourne.
Untold riches awaited Adrian Kempe as one of the NHL’s top unrestricted free agents next summer.
Mitch Marner, among last summer’s top targets, got $12 million a season from Vegas in a sign-and-trade deal with Toronto hours before he would have hit the open market. With more goals than Marner over the last four full seasons, how much could Kempe — in his prime at 29 — have demanded?
We’ll never know. Because whatever amount it might have been, Kempe decided it wasn’t worth more than his happiness. So last month he signed an eight-year contract extension worth a reported $85 million with the Kings that figures to keep him with the only organization he’s ever known for the rest of his career.
“There’s probably some teams that would have given me offers. But I never really got to the part where that was something that I wanted,” he said. “I’m really happy here. Always have been. Family-wise, the same.
“So there was never anything else in my mind.”
That’s a mind that is apparently at ease now that Kempe’s hockey future has been determined. With 13 goals and a team-high 17 assists, he leads the offensively challenged Kings with 30 points and seven of those goals have come in the 17 games since he signed his extension.
But that’s done little to lift the team, which has lost six of their last seven heading into Saturday’s game with the Ducks. The last time the Kings had a seven-game stretch this bad it cost coach Todd McLellan his job.
“I’m not happy, but I really believe in this group,” said winger Kevin Fiala, who shares the team goal-scoring lead with Kempe. “I really believe this is a great team, great players. We just have to kind of find the game. And not just for some minutes, not even for one game, 60 minutes.
“We have to go for a stretch here, get some wins in a row. Start feeling good, start playing good.”
That might be tough given how the Kings will finish 2025. After Saturday’s home game with the resurgent Ducks, the team travels to Colorado to face the Avalanche, who lead the NHL in points.
If the Kings are to turn things around, they will have to jump start an offense which is second-to-last in the NHL, averaging 2.52 goals a game, and a power play that has converted on less than 14% of its chances, also 31st in the 32-team league. And the responsibility for making that happen probably will fall to Kempe, who has scored as many goals over the past four full seasons as Sidney Crosby and has just six fewer assists than Alex Ovechkin, keeping the Swedish Olympian in heady company.
Kings forward Adrian Kempe shoots during a win over the Winnipeg Jets on Nov. 4.
(Harry How / Getty Images)
“Adrian is a bit of a streaky scorer,” coach Jim Hiller said. “A lot of his recent goals are goals that we’ve seen him score before, where he’s either beating someone with speed, a nice deke.
“So to me it’s the type of goals he’s scoring right now that’s got me encouraged.”
That’s not all that’s encouraging. Kempe, a quick and physical two-way forward, is averaging a career-high 19:18 of ice time per game and is on pace to score 30 goals and top 68 points for a second straight season.
With captain Anze Kopitar retiring at the end of the season and defenseman Drew Doughty in the penultimate year of his contract, re-signing Kempe, the team’s future leader on and off the ice, was at the top of Ken Holland’s to-do list when he took over as general manager last spring. And while the length of the contract he offered Kempe never wavered, the price did.
In the end, media reports said Kempe blinked first, telling agent J.P. Berry to lower his salary demands to get a deal done, eventually accepting an average annual value of $10.625 million beginning next season. That nearly doubles the $5.5 million he’ll earn this season and makes him the fifth-best-paid Swede in the NHL, according to the Sweden Herald. But it’s less than he would have gotten on the open market.
“I think it says two things,” Hiller said of the deal. “What it says about the franchise is that the player was known, was drafted here, was developed here.”
What it says about Kempe, he continued, is that he values that loyalty more than money.
Kings forward Adrian Kempe against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Nov. 18.
(Chris O’Meara / Associated Press)
“I think he probably appreciates the time and energy spent on his career, getting him to where he was,” Hiller said. “Now it’s his choice and he says, ‘You know what? I want to stay in place.’”
He’s not alone. A number of the Kings’ recent cornerstone players — among them Dustin Brown, Kopitar and Doughty — spent their entire NHL careers with the team. If he avoids serious injury and a major dropoff in play, Kempe will almost certainly rank among the top five in franchise history in games, goals and points when his contract runs out.
That’s the long-term return on investment Holland and the Kings are hoping for. For the time being, however, they’re counting on Kempe to save a season that seems in danger of spiraling.
Like Fiala, Kempe believes in the Kings.
“If I weren’t happy here, obviously I would consider not playing here,” Kempe said. “We have a good core. We have a good group of younger guys coming up. I think we’re in a good spot.
“Obviously you have to take that in consideration, too, when you sign a new deal. You want to play on a good team, you want to win cups.”
Jordan Eberle scored the tiebreaking goal midway through the third period and added an empty-netter in the final minute, and the Seattle Kraken beat the Ducks 3-1 on Monday night.
Frederick Gaudreau also scored and Kaapo Kakko had two assists for the Kraken. Philipp Grubauer stopped 39 shots.
Matty Beniers set up the go-ahead goal when he slid the puck past defender Radko Gudas and onto the stick of a wide-open Eberle, who snapped a shot from the left circle into the upper-right corner of the net for a 2-1 Kraken lead with 9:56 left.
Eberle then sealed the win with an empty-netter with 36 seconds remaining.
Grubauer had 16 saves in the second period and 15 in the third.
Seattle took a 1-0 lead 4:49 into the second when Gaudreau gathered the rebound of Shane Wright’s shot and flipped the puck into a near-open net for a power-play goal.
The Ducks tied it with 4:20 left in the second when Granlund battled Vince Dunn for position in the slot and redirected Jacob Trouba’s shot from above the right circle past Grubauer for his fourth goal in four games.
Granlund, who has missed 18 games because of injuries, has seven goals and four assists in his last 13 games.
The Ducks played without leading scorer Leo Carlsson, who missed his first game of the season because of a lower-body injury. Seattle played without top defenseman Brandon Montour, who underwent hand surgery Monday and will be out for four weeks. Montour was injured in last week’s fight against Colorado.
Linesman Ryan Gibbons departed with 53 seconds left in the first after tripping in front of the Seattle bench and hitting the back of his head on the ice. He did not return.
Up next for the Ducks: vs. Kings at Crypto.com Arena on Saturday.
Mikael Granlund threaded a pass from the right circle to set up Mintyukov, and also scored. Jacob Trouba and Mason McTavish added goals to help the Ducks move back into first place in the Pacific Division.
Ducks goalie Lukas Dostal made 23 saves. He was pulled Friday night in an 8-3 loss to Dallas after he gave up four goals on seven shots in the first 14½ minutes.
Dmitri Voronkov, Mason Marchment and Zach Werenski scored for Columbus. Merzlikins made 24 saves.
Werenski tied it 3-3 with 7:16 left, taking a pass from Denton Mateychuk and snapping a shot from the left circle over Dostal’s right blocker. He has five goals in three games and 14 overall.
Werenski was injured when he blocked a shot with 2:11 left and struggled to get to the bench, the Blue Jackets taking a penalty for too many men on the ice that stifled any comeback hopes.
Columbus tied it 2-2 when Marchment, acquired from the Seattle Kraken on Friday, redirected a waist-high, blue-line shot from Damon Severson past Dostal 3:39 into the second.
The Ducks took a 3-2 lead when fourth-line winger Ross Johnston slipped a pass from behind the Columbus net to McTavish, who snapped a shot from the slot over Merzlikins’ right shoulder with 6:24 left in the second.
Up next for the Ducks: vs. Seattle at Honda Center on Monday night.
Jason Robertson had two goals and an assist and the Dallas Stars beat the Ducks 8-3 on Friday night for their third straight win.
Roope Hintz and Thomas Harley each had a goal and an assist, and Oskar Bäck, Sam Steel, Ilya Lybushkin and Adam Erne also scored for the Stars. who are an NHL-best 13-2-4 on the road. Mikko Rantanen and Miro Heiskanen each had two assists, and Casey DeSmith had 23 saves.
Ryan Poehling, Beckett Sennecke and Mikael Granlund scored for the Ducks, who have lost four of five. Lukas Dostal gave up four goals on seven shots before he was pulled with 5:41 left in the first period. Petr Mrazek came on and stopped 14 of the 18 shots he faced the rest of the way.
The Stars’ eight-goal output tied a season high, matching their 8-3 win at Edmonton on Nov. 25, and was the most the Ducks have given up this season.
Bäck gave the Stars a 1-0 lead with a shorthanded goal 2:37 into the game after the Ducks turned the puck over behind their net.
Poehling tied it 55 seconds later, scoring in close on the rebound of a point shot by Radko Gudas.
Hintz put Dallas back ahead at 4:42, getting a pass from Robertson in the slot, sliding backward and firing a shot past Dostal for his 11th.
Steel pushed the Stars’ lead to 3-1 with 7:19 left in the first, scoring past Dostal while crashing into the net and dislodging it. The goal was confirmed after a review.
Harley made it a three-goal lead 1:38 later as he got a pass from Rantanen and scored from the right circle.
Robertson scored in front on a power play with 8:50 remaining in the second, and then put a backhander past Mrazek from the right circle four minutes later to make it 6-1. It gave Robertson a team-leading 22 goals.
Erne made it a six-goal lead with 1:30 left in the middle period.
After Sennecke pulled the Ducks back within five 1:01 into the third, Lybushkin got his first of the season 41 seconds later to extend the Stars’ lead to 8-2. Granlund capped the scoring with 5:38 remaining.
Zach Werenski scored twice and added an assist in his 600th NHL game, Boone Jenner had a goal and an assist, and Kent Johnson added two assists. Jet Greaves stopped 24 shots for his first win since Nov. 20.
Mikael Granlund had a goal and an assist, Ryan Strome and Jackson LaCombe also scored goals, and Ryan Poehling recorded two assists for the Ducks. Ville Husso made 24 saves as the Ducks dropped three games on their five-city trip.
Werenski gave Columbus an early lead at 8:21 of the first period, burying a feed from Jenner to extend his home point streak to 11 games.
Strome pulled the Ducks even with a wrister from the crease at 3:35 of the second period, but Columbus responded with two goals in a 43-second span. Werenski put the Blue Jackets back on top before Jenner backhanded in the rebound of an Ivan Provorov shot just 19 seconds later to make it 3–1.
After Granlund pulled the Ducks within a goal at 5:29, LaCombe tied the score with 3:16 left in the third. Fantilli then ended it in overtime with a wrister from the right circle.
The win was Columbus’ first over the Ducks in Nationwide Arena since Dec. 1, 2017.
NEW YORK — Cutter Gauthier scored the go-ahead goal six minutes into the third period and got his second on an empty-netter, Lukas Dostal stopped 26 of the 27 shots he faced, and the Ducks beat the New York Rangers 4-1 on Monday night to end a two-game losing streak.
Gauthier’s first goal with one second left on a power play came off a perfectly placed pass from rookie Beckett Sennecke. Igor Shesterkin barely had a chance to react.
Defenseman Jackson LaCombe scored Anaheim’s first goal shorthanded in the second period, putting home a rebound after Jacob Trouba sprung Ryan Poehling up the ice late in the Rangers’ five-on-three power play. Dostal was brilliant at the other end of the rink, at one point making a toe save on J.T. Miller and sliding over to deny Vladislav Gavrikov immediately after.
The Ducks got a goal in the final seconds from Pavel Mintyukov and celebrated with Trouba and veteran forward Chris Kreider, who returned to play at Madison Square Garden for the first time since the Rangers sent them to Southern California in separate trades. Kreider and Trouba each waved to the crowd after tribute videos during timeouts in the first while fans applauded.
Matthew Robertson scored the only goal for the Rangers, who have lost 12 of 16 games at home. The shot from Robinson deflected off Frank Vatrano’s stick and popped into the air before going in off Dostal’s.
New York Rangers fans welcome Ducks forward Chris Kreider back to Madison Square Garden before the start of the Ducks’ 4-1 win on Monday night.
(Noah K. Murray / Associated Press)
New York was without center Mika Zibanejad, whom coach Mike Sullivan scratched for breaking a team rule by missing a meeting. Big winger Matt Rempe took Zibanejad’s spot in the lineup, back after he missed 24 games since getting injured in a fight Oct. 23.
Up next for the Ducks: Wrap up their five-game Eastern Conference trip Tuesday at Columbus.
