SEATTLE — The Ducks are back to having fun again.
Cutter Gauthier and Pavel Mintyukov each had a goal and an assist, Lukas Dostal made 21 saves and the Ducks beat the Seattle Kraken, 4-2, on Friday night for their sixth consecutive victory following a nine-game losing streak.
Ryan Poehling scored short-handed, Chris Kreider added a power-play goal and Mintyukov banked in a long empty-netter. The Ducks (27-21-3) have three games left on a five-game trip that they opened with a 2-1 shootout victory at NHL-leading Colorado on Wednesday night.
“It’s been fun this last week, week and a half or so, playing hockey,” Gauthier told NHL.com. “[Coach Joel Quenneville] set the standard that we want to rely on our defense and play a solid, tight game and tight checking, and I think so far, we’ve done a great job of that.”
Jared McCann and Jaden Schwartz scored for Seattle (22-19-9), which has lost seven of its past nine games. Philipp Grubauer stopped 27 shots, highlighted by a successful poke-check on Jansen Harkins’ penalty shot at 8:00 of the second period.
Gauthier and Poehling gave the Ducks a 2-0 lead in the first period, with the Ducks outshooting the Kraken 13-2 in the opening 20 minutes.
Gauthier opened the scoring at 1:02 after Mintyukov forced a turnover as Seattle was trying to enter the offensive zone. Jeffrey Viel picked up the loose puck and fed Gauthier, who charged past defenseman Vince Dunn down the right wing and beat Grubauer with a wrist shot inside the left post from the bottom of the right faceoff circle.
“Any time you can catch a guy like that with a lot of speed, it doesn’t matter who it is, it’s always fun,” said Gauthier, who has five points over the past three games (three goals, two assists) following a four-game pointless drought. “And you know you’re going to get a Grade-A chance after that.”
The Ducks doubled their advantage on Poehling’s short-handed breakaway with 4:36 left. Ian Moore backhanded a loose puck out of the Anaheim zone, springing Poehling on a breakaway. He raced down the left side, cut from left to right and avoided Grubauer’s poke-check before chipping it over the goalie’ right pad.
It was the fourth time in the past five games the Kraken have allowed a short-handed goal.
“We had an excellent first period, and I thought we did the same in the second,” Quenneville told NHL.com. “We had a lot of the puck, and checking-wise, support-wise, all over the ice, we had five guys basically in the play, everybody wanted the puck. We scored some timely goals – the shorty’s always a big one – and obviously a huge win for us here.”
McCann got one back for Seattle at 1:55 of the second, taking a drop pass from Jordan Eberle on a 3-on-2 rush and putting a wrist shot into the upper left corner of the net from between the top of the faceoff circles.
The Ducks restored their two-goal advantage on a power play 2:05 later, when Kreider slapped Gauthier’s rebound into an open net from the top of the crease for his 16th goal of the season.
“I think we talked about this at the beginning of the year – we want to be the hardest-working team. That’s going to be our identity,” Quenneville said. “We want to have a check-first mentality … I think we had a different look to us at the beginning of the year, where we could score goals, it looked like, at a higher rate than anybody would have thought, including us … I think we got more prepared and play without the puck, and that commitment is noticeable, and the results speak for themselves.”
The Ducks had a chance to extend their lead to three but Grubauer’s poke check thwarted Harkins’ penalty shot after Ryan Lindgren held Harkins on a breakaway.
Seattle pulled within 3-2 at 1:54 of the third when Shane Wright got the puck between the top of the faceoff circles and sent a pass to Schwartz for a tip-in at the left post.
Mintyukov clinched the victory when he banked a shot off the side boards from the defensive zone for his empty-netter with 1:12 left.
“We like a saying in our locker room: ‘Bend don’t break,’” Gauthier told NHL.com. “And I thought that’s what we did in the third, and able to control the storm and get the ‘W.’”
NOTES
The Ducks’ six-game winning streak is their second run of that length this season after winning seven straight from Oct. 28 to Nov. 9. … Their 27 wins through 51 games are the most for the team at this juncture in nine years (they also had 27 wins through 51 games in 2016-17). … The Ducks have scored 170 goals, their most at this point in a season since 2013-14, when they had 173 goals through 51 games.
UP NEXT
The Ducks have an Alberta back-to-back, playing at Calgary on Sunday night and Edmonton on Monday night.