ANAHEIM — Trailing by four goals 23 minutes into their game against the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Ducks had the visitors right where they wanted them.
Or so they might have thought before ultimately falling short, 7-4.
No team in the NHL has engineered more comeback wins than the Ducks this season, and for one period they leaned into that mojo on Wednesday night at the Honda Center.
Booed off the ice following a meandering, sloppy first period, the Ducks turned the tables and exuberant cheers greeted them leading into the next intermission, after a 4-0 deficit had been wiped away thanks to a quartet of Ducks goals during an 11-minute stretch of the second period.
With the game up for grabs, the Ducks were unable to complete what would have been an outstanding start to a stretch of nine consecutive games in California.
But a day after getting thumped, 5-1, by the Kings, the last-place team in the Metropolitan Division stormed out of the gates in the third period, scoring three again to close its last Golden State trip of the season with a topsy-turvy 7-4 victory.
“We gave pucks away in the third period, and it ended up costing us the game,” Ducks coach Greg Cronin said. “Their last two goals (came off) turnovers, both of them. At least four of their goals came directly off our sticks.”
Blue Jackets forward Johnny Gaudreau had a goal disallowed against the Kings on Tuesday. The following night, he contributed early, assisting on defenseman Zach Werenski’s opener at 3:32 before delivering the Blue Jackets’ second goal six minutes later on a simple deke to the left of Ducks goaltender John Gibson. (He added one more assist as Columbus ran away with it in the third.)
Werenski tapped in another at 18:30 for his fourth goal of the season, forcing the Ducks to chase down what felt like a hopeless cause.
The disappointment in the building deepened when Ducks goalie John Gibson mishandled the puck behind his own net early in the second period, giving Blue Jackets forward Alex Texier an opportunity to sling it to the front where Sean Kuraly tapped in his eighth goal of the season.
Off the resumption of play at center ice, forwards mixed it up as the Ducks’ Ross Johnston tussled with Columbus’ Mathieu Olivier. Neither landed a decisive blow, but the dustup was celebrated by both benches and lifted the energy in the stands.
Troy Terry broke the seal for the Ducks at 9:07 when he carried the puck into the Columbus zone and zipped a wrist shot over goalie Daniil Tarasov’s right shoulder.
“The game in general is a game of momentum shifts, maybe not that extreme,” Terry said. “I thought as a team we had good legs. I thought we skated. Just little mental mistakes got us down 4-0. I was proud of how we battled to come back.”
Mason McTavish made it 4-2 at 16:05, shoving defenseman Adam Boqvist out of the way while assists from Terry and Pavel Mintyukov set him up from point blank.
The Blue Jackets (18-27-10, 46 points) replaced Tarasov in the second period when teammate Adam Boqvist accidentally hit the goalie in the face with his stick blade. Elvis Merzlikins, who allowed a handful of goals to the Kings the night before, didn’t stem the Ducks’ tide.
McTavish soon netted his second of the night, again from Mintyukov and Terry, beating Merzlikins between the legs at 18:49 to give him 17 goals.
Less than a minute later, Alex Killhorn, back after missing nine games following arthroscopic knee surgery, sent the arena into a frenzy when his seventh goal of the season leveled the score at 4-all thanks to Mintyukov’s career-high third assist of the game (giving the defenseman 20 for the season) combined with a well-placed pass for Leo Carlsson’s 14th helper.
“I thought it was a good compete level from us in the second period,” McTavish said. “Any time you’re down four goals in a game and you come back to tie it, you kind of expect to at least get a point in the game. I feel like we kind of let this one slip away.”
Columbus did not concede again and the Ducks’ rally fell shy of a league-best 11th comeback.
With Tarasov back in net for the Blue Jackets (he finished the game with 27 saves against 29 shots) a chippy, high-intensity final frame yielded three more goals for the visitors – almost shocking considering they had the worst third-period goal differential in the NHL coming in at minus-37.
Yegor Chinakhov’s 15th goal of the season preceded Kurlay’s second of the night, and a short-handed empty-net goal by Boone Jenner, his 18th, ended the Ducks’ five-game win streak against Columbus, part of a stretch that included nine wins in 10 games against them.
The Ducks (20-34-2, 42 points) face the Kings on Saturday at Crypto.com Arena, and return to Honda Center on Sunday against Nashville.
