ANAHEIM — The Ducks’ flair for the dramatic had carried them to consecutive wins, but it was the Ottawa Senators who came up with a late goal to nudge past their hosts, 3-2, on Thursday night at Honda Center.
After tying Monday’s match with four seconds to play and winning Wednesday’s on a goal with 3:35 remaining, the Ducks nearly equalized in the final minute Thursday. Beckett Sennecke dropped to one knee to fire a puck that was sent wide by the edge of Linus Ullmark’s skate blade. Troy Terry then had a sterling backdoor chance, but his stick snapped.
“That was a tough break, no pun [intended],” Ducks coach Joel Quenneville said.
The Ducks lost for just the fourth time in their past 13 outings and just the second time in nine home games this season. The Senators had been off since Saturday, when they lost to the Kings, 1-0, to end a seven-game points streak.
“We hung in there until the last two minutes and gave up the go-ahead goal,” Ducks forward Mason McTavish said. “It was a decent effort from us, but it would have been a lot better if we had gotten at least a point.”
Sennecke and McTavish scored in the second period. Petr Mrázek made 22 saves.
Nick Cousins, Shane Pinto and Drake Batherson scored a goal apiece for Ottawa. Ullmark stopped 24 shots.
Prior to the Ducks’ last-minute flurry of punches that failed to land, Batherson tipped Jake Sanderson’s heave from the point past Mrázek with 1:58 to play. Former King Jordan Spence earned the secondary assist.
“We were two minutes away from grabbing a point, at least, and we’re coming away with nothing, so that’s frustrating,” Mrázek said.
Near-misses defined the early part of the second period, including Leo Carlsson ringing the post on a partial breakaway. Much of the mayhem was in the Ducks’ end, however, though Ottawa failed to cash in on its opportunities until after the Ducks fired in two unanswered goals.
The Senators knotted the score anew, near the end of a power play, with 58 seconds on the clock. A tempered transition left Pinto with the puck in the left circle, where he juked Terry and then took advantage of an ill-timed poke check by Mrázek to slip the puck home.
“I didn’t think we were great to start the game, but we found our game. The power play gave us some momentum,” Ottawa coach Travis Green said. “We had a lot of good looks to, man, probably score three or four [goals]. Sometimes when that happens, you feel like it’s not your night, but I give our group credit, we stuck with it.”
The Ducks had taken their first lead of the evening with 5:26 left in the frame. Chris Kreider, who played in his 900th career game, transported the puck through the neutral zone and feathered a pass to McTavish for a no-doubt redirection, his fourth goal of the year.
After a four-game drought, McTavish, who swapped places with Carlsson mid-game, had three points in this back-to-back set.
“I started [the season] pretty decent and then I took a little bit of a step back. Now I’m back in the right direction,” McTavish said.
The Ducks’ first goal also came off the rush, one that turned a broken play into a highlight.
It was Carlsson carrying the puck this time and centering it for Cutter Gauthier. He fanned on his shot attempt, but then dangled the puck between Artem Zub’s legs, emerging on the other side of the defender to make a slick backhand pass to Sennecke. His tap-in tally was his seventh goal, moving him into a three-way tie for the lead among NHL rookies.
The Ducks had courted disaster in their own zone during the opening 20 minutes, but some last-ditch defending kept the game scoreless until the 16:39 mark. Cousins keyed the sequence with a defensive-zone takeaway to cue a counterattack that culminated in his gliding confidently into Nick Jensen’s touch-pass to smoke a slapshot past Mrázek.
Next up, the Ducks continue their six-game homestand as they don their battle armor against Jack Eichel, Mitch Marner and the Vegas Golden Knights.