In Anaheim Sunday, the Ducks managed a 4-2 win over the New Jersey Devils and pushed up the Pacific Division ladder with the two points.
Ryan Getzlaf scored his 11th of the season to give the Ducks a 1-0 lead and Rickard Rakell potted his 31st of the campaign to close out the scoring.
The Ducks needed a complete, all-around game against the surging Devils and got it for a full 60 minutes.
“Any time you can play that complete game, it allows you to look back on different times and understand what it takes to play in the moment and do those sorts of things,” Getzlaf said.
Jakob Silfverberg and Brandon Montour also scored for the Ducks who improved to 37-24-12.
“We had a great start,” Ducks head coach Randy Carlyle said. “We had to have a good start. That’s paramount to getting things going for us in our building. They played yesterday afternoon, so you try to take advantage of that as much as possible.”
Kyle Palmieri and Patrick Maroon struck for New Jersey in the loss.
The Devils dropped to 37-27-8.
“We were not sharp enough and competitive enough to give ourselves a chance to win the game,” New Jersey head coach John Hynes said. “We had pockets, but it wasn’t good enough.”
The Devils hold the second wild card spot in the Eastern Conference.
John Gibson made 15 saves to pick up the win.
“That was definitely a better effort throughout the whole game. We made a couple mistakes, but overall we played pretty solid throughout the whole game and didn’t allow them a whole lot,” Getzlaf said.
[WATCH:Â All Devils vs. Ducks highlights]
Keith Kinkaid made 32 saves in taking the loss.
“They were just all over us. We didn’t push back. I thought they had the physical game going. I thought we kind of shied away from it a little bit,” Maroon said.
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