BOSTON — The Ducks did what winning teams do – take care of business against a struggling team.
Troy Terry snapped a tie in the third period, Mikael Granlund had two goals as part of his five-point night and the Ducks held off the Boston Bruins for a 7-5 victory on Thursday night.
Granlund had two goals and three assists to tie the Ducks’ franchise record for points in a game. He’s the seventh Ducks player to record a five-point game (19 instances) and the first to do so since Ryan Getzlaf had five assists in a Nov. 24, 2015 game against Calgary.
Terry and Jacob Trouba each had a goal and an assist, and Nikita Nesterenko had four assists, two more than he had totaled in his prior 35 NHL games.
Boston dropped its sixth straight game after opening Marco Sturm’s coaching tenure with three wins in a row.
Morgan Geekie scored twice for the Bruins, and David Pastrnak had a goal and an assist. Charlie McAvoy had two assists.
The Ducks scored four goals in a back-and-forth third period. Granlund had a power-play tally for a 4-3 lead 2:52 into the period, slamming home a shot from the right circle. Colangelo, who hails from nearby Stoneham, Massachusetts, then settled a bouncing puck and scored from the slot at 7:49, his first goal of the season giving them a 5-3 lead.
Pastrnak made it a one-goal game with 5:28 left, scoring on a long wrister from the right point just eight seconds into a crucial man advantage.
Just 25 seconds later, Geekie tied the score at 5-5 when he scored a one-timer off a backhand feed from Nikita Zadorov, who rushed end-to-end.
Terry put the Ducks in front again at 15:27 with his second goal of the season.
Granlund tacked on an empty-netter with 2:08 remaining. The forward also had a power-play goal that snapped a 3-3 tie early in the third.
Drew Helleson and Cutter Gauthier also scored for the Ducks in the third game of a five-game road trip. Petr Mrazek made 36 saves.
Casey Mittelstadt and Mason Lohrei scored for Boston. Henri Jokiharju reached 100 career points with an assist on Lohrei’s first goal of the season.
A fight broke out with 7:46 left in the second between the Ducks’ Ross Johnston and Boston’s Tanner Jeannot. The two exchanged right hands and upper cuts for a few minutes before the lineman jumped in. Jeannot waved to the crowd as he and Johnston headed to the penalty box to serve penalties for fighting.
The Ducks played the final two periods with five defensemen after Radko Gudas suffered a lower-body injury.
UP NEXT
The Ducks play the penultimate game of their five-game trip against Tampa Bay on Saturday at 2 p.m. PT.