In Anaheim, Pittsburgh’s Pierre-Olivier Joseph hit for a double on Friday night, and the Penguins downed the Ducks, 6-3.
Casey DeSmith made 28 saves in the Penguins win.
Pittsburgh scored three in the first period to take a 3-1 lead, and never looked back.
“We obviously started well,” DeSmith said. “I thought we carried it for most of the game.”
Joseph and Trevor Zegras traded goals in the fist period for a 1-1 tie before the Pens opened up the offense.
“Those guys took advantage of everything that we gave them,” Zegras said.
Kasperi Kapanen and Jeff Carter scored for the 3-1 lead after the first 20 minutes.
Joseph pushed the advantage to 4-1 at 14:55 in the middle frame.
Pittsburgh made sure there was no doubt about the outcome with markers from Bryan Rust and Jake Guentzel for a 6-1 lead.
“I thought it was a pretty dominant performance,” Pittsburgh coach Mike Sullivan said. “I thought we had the puck an awful lot and I thought we generated numerous amounts of scoring chances.”
Anaheim’s Mason McTavish and John Klingberg scored late in the third period to put some lipstick on the scoreboard.
“We’ve been good enough in a lot of games this year coming back in the third period,” Klingberg said. “There’s no reason to quit, but obviously we can do a lot better throughout the game than we did tonight.”
John Gibson made 53 saves, a franchise record, in the loss.
“It’s tough to say when you give up six goals that your goalie was really good, but he was really good,” Klingberg said.
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