Carolina Hurricanes at Anaheim Ducks

Carolina snaps Ducks' 8-game win streak with 2-1 victory

Ethan Bear scored his first goal of the season and Frederik Andersen made 31 saves against his former team for the Hurricanes, who improved to 13-2-0 after hanging on to win a well-played game between surging clubs. Carolina has won three straight, including the first two on its six-game West Coast road trip.

“Coming in, we knew they were feeling pretty good and playing with a lot of confidence,” Andersen said. “We knew we had a good test for us, but that's something that focuses us and gets us concentrated on playing our game.”

Troy Terry extended his scoring streak to 16 games with a first-period goal for the Ducks, who hadn’t lost since Oct. 29 and hadn’t scored fewer than three goals in a franchise-record 12 straight games.

John Gibson’s career-best winning streak ended at seven games despite 29 saves for the Ducks, including a stop of a third-period penalty shot by Jarvis with 18:40 to play. The Carolina forward atoned eight minutes later by banking the puck off Gibson’s back from behind the net for his third goal of the season.

“Missing the penalty shot, it was good to come back and get one for the boys,” said Jarvis, who also scored a third-period tiebreaking goal at Vegas two nights earlier. “I give myself a 20-second rule (after a mistake). You can't dwell on things that long, especially when the game moves as fast as this one did.”

Anaheim’s 10-game streak with a point ended along with its winning streak, which was tied for the third-longest in team history. Both were the longest active streaks in the league, but the Ducks still got several ovations from a Honda Center crowd grateful to watch an exciting team again after three straight nonplayoff seasons.

“We're a rebuilding team, but we've got our head above water,” Anaheim coach Dallas Eakins said. “We've been able to hang in and play with every team this year. ... (Carolina) is the best team in the league, I think. And if they're not, they're in the top two or three.”

Bear put the Hurricanes ahead in the opening minutes by converting an exceptional cross-ice, backdoor pass from Martin Nečas.

Terry then smacked home a rebound of Adam Henrique’s shot for a tying goal and the latest point in his streak, which began exactly one month ago on Oct. 18. Captain Ryan Getzlaf got the secondary assist for his 1,001st career point.

“Now that this streak is over and behind us, we just need to refocus and go on the road,” Henrique said. “Good teams don’t let losses pile up. ... I think that we showed that we can play in different games and play in a certain way against different teams. The challenge is to get back to the winning side now.”

TROY'S TALLY

Terry’s 16-game streak matches the current run by Connor McDavid, who also scored for Edmonton on Thursday.

Terry’s 12 goals are more than all but one Ducks player scored during the entire 2020-21 season, when Anaheim finished last in the NHL in scoring. The Ducks have been utterly transformed this season, playing an up-tempo, aggressive style that has left them scarcely resembling last year’s team despite a nearly identical roster.

But Terry wasn't happy afterward, saying the Ducks squandered too many scoring chances.

“Our mindset is different now,” he said.

HI FREDDIE

Andersen spent three successful seasons on Pacific Division-winning teams in Anaheim, backstopping the Ducks to the 2015 Western Conference finals. He teamed up with Gibson to win the Jennings Trophy in 2016, but the Ducks traded him to Toronto shortly afterward because Andersen was due for a contract extension.

Max Comtois and Sam Steel, the two forwards chosen with the draft picks sent by the Maple Leafs, are both regulars for the Ducks, although Comtois missed his third straight game Thursday with an upper-body injury.

UP NEXT

Hurricanes: At Kings on Saturday.

Ducks: At Predators on Monday.

CAR leads series 1-0