ANAHEIM, Calif. – In their continued journey towards being a contender, it's games like these against a winless Calgary Flames team that the Anaheim Ducks will look back on and wince.
Calgary dictated the pace from puck drop, and despite Ducks overcoming the Flames' early strike, Calgary broke a 2-2 tie with gotta-have-that five-hole wrist shot with just over four minutes to play to claim its first win of the season, 4-2, on Tuesday at Honda Center.
Calgary dominated the shot clock, leading 22-8 at one point in the second period, to split the home-and-home with Anaheim. Ducks won in Calgary in a similarly scrappy 4-2 game on Saturday.
"Not our best," Mikael Granlund said. "It’s a tie game in the third period and we got to find a way to get some points out of those games. Obviously, didn’t do it tonight. That’s hockey."
Beckett Sennecke scored his fourth goal in three games on a four-on-four breakaway to tie in the first period, and Leo Carlsson followed up by netting his second of the season on a go-ahead power play later in the frame.
Ducks 2025 first-round pick Roger McQueen was called up for his NHL debut, as Anaheim was without Cutter Gauthier (day-to-day, upper-body injury) and Ryan Poehling (6-8 weeks, MCL sprain). McQueen played 11:26 of ice time and won three of six face-offs with one shot and one shot block.
"It was just a frustrating game all around," Sennecke said. "For me, the chances I had I missed, and they’re high quality. We just couldn’t get any sustained o-zone time where we were turning over lines and breaking them down."
Adam Klapka put Calgary on the board first, and after Carlsson put the Ducks ahead, Aydar Suniev tied it back up on a second-period one-timer. Martin Pospisil snapped in the go-ahead goal with just over four minutes to play. Yegor Sharangovich potted the empty netter with 1:22 remaining.
Lukáš Dostál stopped 32 of 35 shots, and Gilroy, California native Dustin Wolf made 23 saves on 25 shots.
Anaheim (4-2-0, 8 points) concludes another quick two-game homestand against the Boston Bruins on Friday. Ducks then head out on a weeklong tri-state area East Coast road trip beginning with a New York back-to-back at the Rangers on Monday and at the Islanders on Tuesday.
"I don’t find much positive right now," Joel Quenneville said. "That one hurt."
Calgary came out firing early and often, and they finally caught a sleepy Ducks start eight minutes in.
Maksim Tsyplakov intercepted a wayward pass from Jeff Malott into the middle of the defensive zone, and Adam Klapka quickly fired a shot that seemingly surprised Dostál and squeezed between the arm and body of the Ducks goaltender, 1-0.
Calgary continued to carry the play–outshooting the Ducks by double, 14-7, in the first period–until Sennecke made his own offense at four-on-four.
"They were super on top of our wingers and pre-pinching us, which is challenging, but it leads to odd-man rushes too," Sennecke said. "We just weren’t getting the odd mans and weren’t the pucks out of our zone. It felt like they were honestly on top of us for most of the game five-on-five."
Both teams struggled to control the puck in the Anaheim defensive zone, but just as the Flames defender settled the puck at the blue line, Sennecke struck from his lurking position to poke the puck out to center ice. The 20-year-old chased it down for a breakaway and finished for the equalizer, 1-1.
With the Ducks now awake, Anaheim’s red hot power play took the ice two minutes later, and Carlsson cooked.
Judd Caulfield–taking a netfront position on the power play with Cutter Gauthier out–rimmed the puck along the wall, where Mikael Granlund deftly tapped to Carlsson. The Swedish superstar had enough time to curl and fire one over Wolf’s glove for the lead, 2-1.
Granlund’s assist marked a franchise record season-opening six-game point streak for the Anaheim captain. The five-game record was previously shared by Corey Perry (2014-15), Kevin Shattenkirk (2021-22) and Jackson LaCombe this season.
The special teams battle continued into the second period with six penalties called, including a scrap between Jeff Malott and Klapka (decision to the 6-foot-8, 235-pound Klapka).
Calgary earned a full two-minute two-man advantage, as Sennecke and Alex Killorn both went to the box on the same sequence, but despite Dostál’s four saves and the Ducks’ two blocks on the kill, the Flames grabbed the lead just on the other side.
As Sennecke and Killorn chased back into the zone, the Flames pushed forward, and former Ducks forward Ryan Strome fed a seam pass through a stickless Tim Washe for a game-tying one-timer by Aydar Suniev, 2-2.
Anaheim had two power plays after the Flames leveled but generated just two shots on goal to keep the game tied entering the final 20 minutes.
Neither team could find much advantage in the third period, until a wild sequence put Calgary on top with just over four mintues to play.
The Flames nearly tipped the puck through Dostál on one end, and then Killorn sent a high flip out to a streaking Sennecke, who tried to battle a Flames defender on his back. Sennecke could not corral the puck, and Calgary went back the other way, with Pospisil beating Dostál clean on a five-hole wrister for the go-ahead goal, 3-2.
"We can’t give up that goal at that time of the game," Quenneville said.
Anaheim pulled Dostál for the extra attacker with 1:46 remaining, but the Ducks could never get settled. Sharangovich chased the puck out to center to finish off the empty-netter and the win.