PITTSBURGH — The Ducks kicked off their five-game road trip with a thrilling victory.
Beckett Sennecke scored a short-handed goal with one-tenth of a second left in regulation to force overtime, Leo Carlsson scored in the shootout and the Ducks beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 4-3, on Tuesday night for their fifth win in seven games.
Ducks goaltender Ville Husso had just reached the bench for an extra skater, when the 19-year-old Sennecke drove to the net. He eluded three defenders and his shot deflected off the glove of Pittsburgh’s Erik Karlsson and into the net. A replay review confirmed the shot beat the buzzer.
Sennecke tied Scott Niedermayer (59:59 on Nov. 21, 2008) for the latest game-tying goal in Ducks history and became the first NHL rookie to score a game-tying goal in the final second of regulation while short-handed.
“I wasn’t really keeping track of the time,” Sennecke told NHL.com. “I saw it go in. So, I wasn’t even thinking about the time. And then, it was at, like, what, 0.1 or something like that? Perfect.”
Karlsson, who had two assists, told reporters he hadn’t yet watched the play.
“It hit my hand and went in. There was no question about it,” Karlsson told NHL.com. “How it came to be that way, I don’t really know. … It’s definitely something that should not happen, you know? Seventeen seconds left, up a goal on the power play. We win the face-off, and they score a goal.
“This was a game that, again, shouldn’t have happened the way it did. We can sulk for a day or two.”
Husso made 44 saves, including seven in overtime, and stopped all three shots in the shootout.
Carlsson scored with a backhand in the first round of the shootout for the Ducks. Husso made saves on Tommy Novak, Sidney Crosby and Ville Koivunen.
“I’ve seen some crazy endings,” Ducks coach Joel Quenneville told NHL.com. “I’ve seen an overtime game in the playoffs comparable, but not as dramatic in the dying second. You don’t know if it was in or not before the bell rung. But, hey, we’re very fortunate to come out of there with two points.”
Jackson LaCombe and Troy Terry also scored for the Ducks (19-10-1), who have won three in a row.
Noel Acciari, Novak and Anthony Mantha scored for the Penguins (14-7-7), and Arturs Silovs stopped 26 shots as Pittsburgh suffered its second consecutive shootout loss.
Mantha put the Penguins ahead 3-2 on a power-play goal with 3:55 remaining. Husso was called for holding the stick of Rutger McGroarty during a scramble in front of the crease and Mantha scored seven seconds into the man-advantage when his attempted pass to Bryan Rust through the crease went off the stick of Husso and into the net.
Crosby won a faceoff and assisted on Mantha’s goal for his 1,717th career point, moving him within five of Mario Lemieux’s franchise record.
Pittsburgh outshot the Ducks 16-8 in the opening period, but could only take a 1-0 lead on the first goal of the season by Acciari at 9:49.
The scoring play began with Acciari winning a faceoff in the Ducks’ zone. The puck went to teammate Connor Dewar, who swung and missed but then kicked the puck back to Acciari, who scored with a wrist shot through the legs of Ducks defenseman Pavel Mintyukov from the right circle.
The Ducks began to get their legs moving in the second period and tied it 1-1 at 5:19 when LaCombe scored from a nearly impossible angle. The Ducks won a faceoff in the Pittsburgh zone, and the puck went back to LaCombe along the wall. He drove to the net through the left circle and was nearly parallel with the goal line when he flicked a shot that squeezed through between Silovs’ head and the near post.
Terry put the Ducks ahead 2-1 later in the second when he secured a bouncing puck in the Pittsburgh zone and slammed it past Silovs from the bottom of the right circle.
The Penguins tied it 2-2 with 19 seconds left in the second period when Novak banked the puck off the back of Husso from below the goal line on the second rebound try, extending his goal streak to four games.
Future Hall of Famer Crosby was still trying to process the finish afterward.
“I mean, when are you going to see that happen again, you know?” Crosby told NHL.com. “I’d have to watch it, but I don’t really know. I think that they went to pull their goalie and we kind of fumbled the puck near their blue line.
“They had a rim that was eight feet high that somehow ended up where they were able to handle it. Tried a play, and they got a bounce with 0.1 left. It’s crazy. We did a lot of good things tonight. It’s unfortunate.”
Sennecke assisted on LaCombe’s goal. The rookie has 26 points (10 goals, 16 assists) in 30 games, becoming the fastest teenager in Ducks history and the first NHL rookie this season to reach 25 points. Mason McTavish took 40 games to reach the mark in 2022-23.
Sennecke is the third Ducks rookie to have 10 or more goals through 30 games in a season, joining Bobby Ryan (14 in 2008-09) and Paul Kariya (12 in 1994-95).
UP NEXT
The Ducks play at the New York Islanders on Thursday at 4 p.m. PT.