ANAHEIM –– The Ducks erased three deficits against the St. Louis Blues on Sunday at Honda Center but ultimately fell short 6-5 in a shootout.
Rookie Leo Carlsson and All-Star Frank Vatrano each lit the lamp twice for Anaheim, with Nikita Nesterenko adding a goal. Trevor Zegras, Alex Killorn and Isac Lundeström all dished out two assists. Lukáš Dostál stopped 26 shots.
Leading scorer Robert Thomas paced St. Louis with a goal and three assists. Captain Brayden Schenn contributed a goal and an assist. Zachary Bolduc, Pavel Buchnevich and Matthew Kessel each had a goal. Jordan Kyrou chipped in three assists before scoring the shootout’s lone goal. Jordan Binnington made 33 saves.
“It was a good atmosphere, it was a great game and we just ended up on the right side of it. But I liked how we came back, I liked the way we responded and played that game,” Vatrano said.
The shootout opened with a skyward backhand attempt by Zegras hitting the post. Kyrou had no such issues on his own backhander, which became the shootout-winner.
Overtime was played with vigor and a pair of solid chances near its conclusion for Olen Zellweger, who was poke checked, and Troy Terry, whose short-side shot in the dying embers nearly earned the Ducks a second point.
Carlsson knotted the score at five with 3:51 remaining in regulation when he zoomed toward the inner edge of the right circle to snipe a snapshot inside the left post for the 19-year-old’s 12th goal of the season.
“When he gets the puck, he’s [trying] to score a goal, whether it’s coming off of his stick or somebody else scores the goal, he’s just got that mentality,” Ducks coach Greg Cronin said. “When he’s on his game, you see that. The first two periods, he was just OK. In the third period, he was like, ‘I’m taking the game over,’ and he did.”
Vatrano scored his second goal of the evening and 32nd of the season, adding intrigue to the final 11:56 of regulation. Zegras fended off two checkers behind the net, leaving him draped over the nylon with his left arm balancing him against the cage. With only his right arm on his stick, he shoveled the puck in front for Vatrano, who kicked it to his stick and backhanded it home.
“He’s a very unique player because he sees the ice so well,” Cronin said of Zegras. “Somebody made a comment to me that he reminded him a little bit of Magic Johnson, his teammates sometimes got hit in the head with the basketball because they weren’t ready for the pass.”
The Ducks seized momentum previously, but then handed it right back in the first 2:40 of the third period.
Just 49 seconds after they scored on the power play, Vatrano took an interference penalty and the Blues kept the Ducks at arm’s length Schenn’s two-swipe, power-play goal.
A mere 62 ticks into the final frame, the Ducks halved their deficit with a man-advantage marker. Terry fed Lundeström in the low slot, where his fanning on a one-timer proved fortuitous as the puck sailed to Carlsson at the back post for a tap-in tally, his 11th. Carlsson has three goals in his past two games, but his most recent goal before that was nestled uncomfortably between droughts of nine and 22 games.
“It’s like a ‘finally’ moment,’” Carlsson said. “It feels amazing to score goals again.”
“(GM Pat Verbeek), Cro, my dad, my mom, everyone tells me to shoot the puck more. Right now, it’s working,” he added.
Despite compelling underlying numbers for the Ducks, the Blues led 4-2 at the second intermission.
With 4:10 to play in the second period, the Blues got an insurance marker off a moderately paced counterattack that led to Buchnevich’s one-timer.
St. Louis reclaimed the lead just over two minutes earlier, cashing in on a power play. Thomas received the puck near the right-wing wall before gliding atop the right faceoff dot and rifling a shot through Schenn’s screen.
The Ducks found their second equalizer of the night 3:41 into the second stanza. Killorn took the puck to the net and his backhand bid sat inside the blue paint. Vatrano got his stick on the puck before Binnington knocked it in with his glove. Vatrano was credited with the goal and Killorn with his 500th career assist.
While Cronin lauded Killorn’s championship-seasoned poise, he said Vatrano had developed into his roster’s most reliable player.
“He does everything hard,” Cronin said. “He blocks shots, he kills penalties, he’s on the power play, he backchecks harder than anybody that we have on our team and he gets rewarded for it, because he gets goals.”
The visitors went to the dressing room with a 2-1 lead after 20 minutes thanks to a late-period breakaway save on Ryan Strome by Binnington and, before that, Kessel’s first career goal.
Terry’s giveaway inside the offensive blue line nearly went for naught after Schenn mishandled a pass in the neutral zone, but the Blues salvaged the rush as Thomas found a trailing Kessel for a shot under the crossbar and inside the far post.
The Ducks had drawn even at 2:37 off a sequence where Nesterenko out-competed towering defenseman Colton Parayko, beginning with a board battle that won possession for the Ducks and ending with a forceful effort to beat Parayko to Gustav Lindström’s rebound before popping it past Binnington. Nesterenko’s second career goal came against the same team that surrendered his first on March 25, 2023.
The Blues got on the board just 11 seconds into the contest. After winning the opening faceoff, they ended up with a three-on-two rush as Radko Gudas was forced to defend Thomas and Bolduc. Thomas moved the puck to Bolduc, who let fly with a wrist shot to the far side for the rookie’s third NHL goal.
Next up will be a Freeway Faceoff with the Kings at Honda Center on Tuesday, following a shootout loss to a team that had effectively been eliminated from playoff contention with its loss Saturday.
“Now, what happens when we play L.A.?” Cronin said. “They’re still fighting and clawing for positioning, I think it’s going to be a different atmosphere.”
