In Anaheim, Adrian Kempe scored in his fourth straight game, and the Los Angeles Kings downed the Ducks, 6-3, on Friday night.
Pheonix Copley got the start for the Kings, and made 16 saves until he was assessed a match penalty in the middle frame.
Jonathan Quick relieved Copley and made eight.
The Kings improved to 31-18-7.
“Penalties, special team situations, losing the starting goaltender, a lot of variables went into the night,” Kings coach Todd McLellan said. “Obviously, finding a way to close out the night was important for us.”
Los Angeles stretched their current win streak to three games, they are 6-1-1 in their last eight games.
“When you’re outplaying a team that hard in the first period, the tendency is to kind of stay off the gas a little bit,” Kings defenseman Drew Doughty said. “That’s something we need to fix.”
Frank Vatrano, Kevin Shattenkirk, and Mason McTavish were the Ducks’ strikers.
“In the first, they had us down in our [defensive] zone and we weathered it a bit,” Vatrano said. “Then we had our push.”
Anaheim dropped to 17-33-6.
LA took a 1-0 lead in the first period on a strike from Blake Lizotte.
Shattenkirk tied in the middle frame, 1-1.
The Kings replied with goals from Viktor Arvidsson, his first of the night, and Kempe, power play, to put LA up, 3-1.
“Starting the third on a five-minute kill can get you out of the rhythm, but we managed to pull it off, which was good,” Arvidsson said.
McTavish scored off the Copley penalty time to cut the score to 3-2 early in the third, but Anze Kopitar scored to reclaim the two-goal lead for the Kings.
Anaheim’s Vatrano scored three and half minutes later to trim the lad back to 4-3.
Arvidsson added his second of the game, and the third power play goal of the game for LA, to make the score 5-3.
“I thought our guys played hard,” Ducks coach Dallas Eakins said. “They competed hard. It certainly wasn’t a three-goal game.”
Kevin Fiala added a late empty-net goal for the 6-3 final.
John Gibson made 35 saves in the loss.
“Another game where we shot ourselves in the foot,” Gibson said.
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