ANAHEIM –– The Ducks astonished again by completing their fifth third-period rally of a season that was only 11 games old, and this time they toppled the defending Stanley Cup champions, the Vegas Golden Knights, 4-2, at Honda Center Sunday.
After winning a match they trailed 2-0 at the second intermission, they have now upended both the Cup champs and the Presidents’ Trophy winners from last season (the Boston Bruins), and in wagon-circling, heart-stopping fashion no less.
Mason McTavish capped the comeback with his clinching goal. Sam Carrick scored the equalizer and added an empty-netter. Adam Henrique also tallied while leading goal-scorer Frank Vatrano contributed two assists, as did Cam Fowler. John Gibson turned in a superb effort, making 30 of 32 saves. The Ducks have now won six straight games, the longest active streak in the NHL and the franchise’s most enduring surge since an eight-game tear in November of 2021.
Jack Eichel led Vegas with a goal and an assist on Ivan Barbashev’s marker. Logan Thompson had 19 saves in Vegas’s first regulation loss this year.
“It’s pretty special. I’ve been watching most of the games from the pressbox,” said two-time Cup winner Alex Killorn, who made his Ducks debut Sunday after recovering from a broken finger. “I don’t know how it was in the past, but going down two-nothing to the Stanley Cup champions, the best team in the league in my opinion, the Vegas Golden Knights, to show resilience and to come back [was impressive], and we’ve done it a bunch of times against a bunch of different teams.”
Just 3:40 showed on the clock when McTavish, who had dominated the netfront all shift, received a pass on the doorstep that he forced past Thompson to give the Ducks their first lead of the evening. Carrick tacked on an empty-net marker with 1:09 to play.
McTavish has factored into five of the Ducks’ seven game-winning goals, scoring three and assisting on two. His high-stakes swagger predates the NHL: he made a game-preserving defensive play in overtime that allowed Canada to edge Finland for gold at the World Junior Championships.
“He’s got that clutch gene. Whenever he gets the puck in a big-time moment, it seems like he scores or makes a big play,” Killorn said.
The Ducks had come up with a massive penalty kill in the middle of the period, during which they had to confront Vegas’s top unit for the entire two minutes. They rode that momentum into an equalizer with 9:05 to play. Pavel Mintyukov stole the puck back from Eichel as Vegas tried to break out of their zone, and his pass found Carrick behind the defense. Carrick deked his way into the second of his three goals this season.
“Great play by him to get it over to me, and I was just all alone. It’s hard to believe at 19 years old, how comfortable he is out there,” Carrick said.
“He’s going to be a stud for a lot of years in this league,” added Carrick about Mintyukov. “It’s amazing how confident he’s come in here and how well he’s played.”
A penalty called at the end of the second period carried over into the third and the Ducks cashed in a few seconds before it expired. A puck hit Henrique in the slot, where he turned and swiftly swept the puck home in one motion for his second goal of 2023-24. The Ducks have now scored at least one power-play goal in four straight games across which they’ve converted half a dozen times with the extra man. They’ve also gone eight-of-eight on the penalty kill in their last two games.
The middle frame was decidedly stronger for the Ducks but it produced the same result, 20 minutes passing and their hole deepening by a goal. They had Ryan Strome’s menacing one-timer, a three-on-one that sputtered after a save by Thompson on Trevor Zegras and, overall, a more forward-facing period.
Yet it was Eichel getting his first goal and second point of the night when he glided gracefully toward the right faceoff dot, where he seared a shot past Gibson that entered the net between the post and crossbar, exiting instantaneously with 6:17 remaining. In the final minute of the period, Gibson had to extend and contort his body in unnatural ways to keep the game tied as sloppy puck management and a tenacious forecheck combined to create chaos.
The Ducks were out-shot 10-6 in the first period but seemed to be absorbing and reacting rather than dictating for much of the stanza, which left them with a one-goal deficit.
Vegas got on the board first 8:51 into the contest. Ilya Lyubushkin was all by himself against three Vegas attackers. Eichel faked a pass to Jonathan Marchessault in the middle before finding Barbashev on the left side for a redirection goal from point-blank range. The Ducks regained some of their footing late in the period, especially when Carrick drilled Keegan Kolesar with an open-ice hit, and settled in for the final 40 minutes.
“We wanted to play a dump-and-chase game, but we kept turning it over in the first period, and the resiliency came in from the coachability of the group, because we stopped doing that, fortunately, in the second and third periods,” Coach Greg Cronin said. “We did a great job on the penalty kill; it was a great team effort.”