Ducks get even with Vegas in Game 4

ANAHEIM — Ducks coach Joel Quenneville said he and his staff wondered all year long how their group would respond to the bright lights and adversity of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

On Mother’s Day, they got their answer.

They shortened their best-of-seven series to a best-of-three, knotting their second-round matchup with the Vegas Golden Knights with a 4-3 triumph on Sunday night at Honda Center.

In the process, they won the special-teams battle 2-1 despite an evening with one missed call after another against Vegas. They also out-shot and out-hit the Golden Knights in Game 4.

Rookie Beckett Sennecke and veteran Alex Killorn each notched a goal and an assist. Cutter Gauthier set up their goals and another by Ian Moore. Mikael Granlund also scored. Lukáš Dostál recovered from getting the hook in Game 3 to make 18 saves in a Game 4 win. Mason McTavish returned to the lineup and Olen Zellweger made his playoff debut in place of Tyson Hinds.

Mitch Marner set up tallies from Pavel Dorofeyev, Brett Howden and Tomáš Hertl to move Marner back into the playoff scoring lead with 16 points. Jack Eichel contributed two assists. Carter Hart stopped 19 of 23 shots.

The Ducks padded their lead early in the closing stanza and that insurance came in handy when an unmarked Hertl scored 6-on-5 with 64 seconds remaining off a silky feed to the backpost by Marner.

That was academic in large measure because Gauthier, who led the Ducks with 41 goals this season but hadn’t recorded a point yet in the series, diversified his game on Sunday.

He drew two penalties and had three assists, including two of the primary variety. His seam pass allowed Moore, who returned to the lineup playing his natural position of defense in place of the injured Drew Helleson, to fake a slap shot before adjusting his angle and nailing a snapper through traffic 3:43 into Period 3 for his first career playoff goal and point.

Vegas and the Ducks played to a 1-1 stalemate in the second period, leaving the Ducks up 3-2 at the intermission.

The go-ahead goal was the hosts’ second one man up, with the engineer of their first, Killorn, becoming the finisher. Sennecke’s puck reversal allowed Killorn and Gauthier to run a give-and-go play, with Killorn scoring despite his initial pass missing its mark and his shot banking off Hart. Killorn now has nine points in 10 playoff games after posting a modest 33 across 82 regular-season matches.

William Karlsson, whom the Ducks drafted but deployed for just 18 games, set up the equalizer 4:04 into the middle frame. A lax backcheck from two of the Ducks’ better defensive players, Jackson LaCombe and Tim Washe, let Karlsson skate the puck down below the goal line and find Howden in front for a redirection. Howden’s seven goals moved him into the three-way tie for the playoff lead after he compiled just a dozen markers all season.

The two sides exchanged man-advantage markers in the middle of the first period as the Ducks hit the nylon on the game’s first power play before Vegas reciprocated 1:39 later. The Ducks would take a 2-1 lead with 4:35 to play and carry it into the dressing room.

Granlund gave the Ducks their first lead in over 75 minutes of the series. Jeffrey Viel recovered the puck on the forecheck and found Granlund, who strode ahead and flicked a shot that was disrupted by Cole Smith. The puck bounced off the ice and over Hart’s pad for a tiebreaking goal, Granlund’s fourth of the playoffs.

Before that, there was a punch and a counterpunch on the power play.

The Ducks’ conversion was their first of the series, after going 0-for-11 with the extra man. Vegas snapped an even longer streak on the PK, as they’d killed 21 straight penalties dating back to Round 1.

Killorn first set Gauthier up in the slot for a dangerous bid, the rebound from which came to Killorn. He fed Sennecke above the right circle for a one-timer that became his third goal in three games and fourth of the postseason.

Then Vegas drew a penalty and went to work, leveling the contest at one. Eichel ran the show from the left circle, where he’d eventually launch a one-timer off Dostál’s glove that Dorofeyev swept into the net.

Game 5 will be in Vegas on Tuesday. The Ducks lost their Game 5 up 3-1 against the Edmonton Oilers in Round 1, while Vegas won its second of three consecutive decisions in its Game 5 to rally past the Utah Mammoth last month.