For 40 minutes, it looked like Anaheim had exactly the kind of night it needed.
The Ducks built a pair of three-goal cushions against the NHL’s last-place team, carried a 5-2 lead with 12 minutes left and appeared poised to turn a miserable stretch into something useful at home. Instead, the whole thing unraveled in a hurry, and Vancouver walked out of Honda Center with a 6-5 overtime win on Tuesday after a collapse that left the Ducks empty-handed and frustrated.
The Canucks scored twice with the goalie pulled in a 49-second span to force overtime, then finished it off with 10 seconds left in the extra period on a two-man advantage. For Anaheim, it was a brutal swing from control to damage control to defeat.
“That can’t happen,” Mikael Granlund said. “Sometimes these things happen, but it’s unacceptable. We have to do a better job to close out these games.”
Anaheim fell to 5-6-1 and has now dropped six of its last seven. The Ducks are also off to a 1-3-1 start at home. Vancouver, meanwhile, has now won nine of its last 10 games at Honda Center and four of its last five overall against Anaheim.
The late-game breakdown was as ugly as the scoreline suggests. Vancouver’s push came while Anaheim kept handing over opportunities, and the Canucks cashing in on the man advantage proved decisive. Vancouver had seven power plays to Anaheim’s two, and the final sequence in overtime summed up the night: Beckett Sennecke was called for a high stick on the forecheck, then Alex Killorn was penalized for goaltender interference on a shorthanded rush after seemingly being pushed into the Vancouver netminder.
“They had 10 minutes of power play. We had less than a minute,” Joel Quenneville said.
“That had something to do with it… That (Killorn penalty) something we talked about. I didn’t like the last call.”
Anaheim still had done plenty early to put itself in position to win. A.J.
Greer scored twice, his first two-goal game since Jan. 12 with Florida, and Jackson LaCombe piled up three assists. Greer, Jeff Malott and Sennecke all finished on tip-ins and deflections, helping the Ducks run their league-high total in that category to 11.
Leo Carlsson added another rebound goal.
The Ducks’ scoring came with a familiar kind of grime around the crease, but the margin was still there. Anaheim led 4-1 and later 5-2, with Vancouver’s goals at that stage coming off odd bounces around the net rather than sustained pressure.
Then the momentum flipped. Just 30 seconds after Greer’s second goal made it 5-2, Jamie Oleksiak blasted an unscreened one-timer through Lukáš Dostál’s five hole to pull Vancouver back to 5-3. From there, the Canucks poured it on over the final 12 minutes of regulation, outshooting Anaheim 8-2.
The first of Jonathan Lekkerimäki’s two late goals came after a pair of Ducks mistakes. Sam Colangelo iced the puck while chasing the empty-net chance from Anaheim’s own zone instead of carrying it to center ice first.
On the next shift, Greer failed to clear and instead sent a backhand off the boards into the middle, where Lekkerimäki was waiting. He fired past an uncovered screen and cut it to 5-4.
“Benefit of giving them some life with some plays we make with possession,” Quenneville said. “All of the sudden they go the other way or it’s in our net.
We carelessly make plays senselessly. I think that’s where we got to be smarter.
We gotta play smarter as a team.”
The tying goal followed soon after. Dostál couldn’t secure a puck at the net front, Vancouver worked it around the horn, and Lekkerimäki beat traffic again through another unscreened lane to make it 5-5 with 1:57 left.
“We just sat back and let them come,” Jackson LaCombe said. “That’s not our identity and the way we want to play. We can’t do that.”
Dostál finished with 25 saves on 33 shots in his ninth start over the last 12 games. Leevi Merilainen stopped 18 shots for Vancouver.
Overtime never really belonged to Anaheim. The Ducks managed no shots in the extra session, while Vancouver generated all four attempts, including two on the power play. Filip Hronek buried the winner on the five-on-three with a one-timer to seal it.
“That was a terrible loss,” Quenneville said.
Anaheim stays at home for Buffalo on Thursday, then hosts Ottawa on Sunday before heading back to Vancouver next Tuesday to open a three-game Western Canada trip.
This was also the first game of the season in which Anaheim did not insert a previously scratched player into the lineup, whether because of injury or a coach’s decision. The Ducks had only two defensemen changing pairs, making this their most consistent game-to-game lineup in the last seven games.
“I have to admit,” Joel Quenneville said at morning skate on Tuesday, “we have been fluctuating with the lines in a lot of different looks, different familiarity and different thought processes. Just looking for some continuity. When you don’t win, you flip things around until you find the right recipe.”
That continuity may not last long, though. More changes could be coming Thursday.
LaCombe extended his assist streak to four games and now has points in 10 of 12 this season. Sennecke became the fourth fastest player to 30 career goals in Ducks history, reaching the mark in 94 games behind Paul Kariya (63 games), Bobby Ryan (81 games) and Dustin Penner (92 games). He leads the team with seven goals and 10 minor penalties.
Carlsson’s goal was the 65th of his career, moving him to second in NHL history for goals by a Swedish player before age 22. Only Mats Sundin, with 83, had more.
Roger McQueen played 6:20 in his seventh NHL game. He skated just two shifts in the second period and one in the third.
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