For twenty minutes on Sunday night, the Ottawa Senators were cruising toward a perfect end to their California trip. Then the game flipped completely. Cutter Gauthier scored a hat trick and the Anaheim Ducks ran off six unanswered goals to beat Ottawa 6-3 at Honda Center on November 1.
Ottawa led 3-0 after the first period on goals from Philip Tomasino, Claude Giroux and Michael Amadio, scoring three times on their first seven shots. Anaheim answered with two goals in the second period, three more in the third, and the last four goals of the night on the power play, finishing 4 for 5 with the man advantage.
Ottawa Starts Perfectly
The Senators could not have scripted a better opening. Tomasino opened the scoring by tipping a Thomas Chabot shot for his first goal as a Senator. Just 62 seconds later Giroux raced down the right wing and rifled home a second goal on Ottawa’s fourth shot of the game, and Amadio made it 3-0 before the intermission. Ottawa had scored 12 goals across five periods of hockey at that point, carrying straight on from Saturday’s win in San Jose.
Context made the collapse harder to excuse and easier to explain at the same time. Ottawa were playing their second game in as many nights, while Anaheim had not played since Thursday and had spent the whole week at home. Fatigue was always going to test the Senators late. It does not explain what happened next, because the game turned long before tired legs should have decided it.
Gauthier Sparks The Comeback
The comeback started with a gift. Ninety seconds into the second period, Shane Pinto mishandled a puck during an Ottawa breakout and pushed it back in front of his own net, where Gauthier pounced to make it 3-1. Judd Caulfield cut the lead to 3-2 at 3:33 of the period, and Caulfield tied the game 3-3 on the power play with 42 seconds left in the second, tipping a point shot past Jonas Johansson.
The third period belonged to Gauthier and the Anaheim power play. With Ottawa serving two penalties, Gauthier scored on a five on three advantage at 1:50 to put the Ducks ahead 4-3, sliding a shot under Johansson from a sharp angle. Still on the power play 36 seconds later, he scored again from nearly the same spot to complete his second career hat trick and make it 5-3. Roger McQueen added a fourth power play goal at 15:19 to close the scoring.
Caulfield finished with two goals and an assist, Leo Carlsson had three assists, and Laurent Brossoit made 19 saves in his first start for Anaheim. Johansson allowed six goals on 33 shots for Ottawa, whose penalty kill went unanswered all night while their own power play finished 0 for 3.
The turnaround carried an extra edge for Anaheim because of how the previous game had gone. The Ducks had just allowed six straight goals and a hat trick in their last outing, a collapse of exactly the kind they inflicted on Ottawa on Sunday. Young teams usually learn games like this the hard way, and the Ducks spent the first period looking like they were about to learn it again. Instead, one Ottawa turnover in front of its own net changed the entire evening, and Anaheim’s power play, one of the league’s most dangerous units this season, did the rest with four straight conversions.
What It Means For Ottawa
The Senators lost three of four games on their western trip and head home with a familiar problem. The offence produced, the start was strong, and the game still got away from them in the areas that decide tight nights, discipline, penalty killing, and game management with a lead. Dylan Cozens was ejected for a hit on A.J. Greer that the league may review, which could leave Ottawa short another forward.
Anaheim, now 6-7-1 with 13 points, will take the opposite lesson. The Ducks had won only once in their previous eight games and had just two home wins all season, yet they have now scored 24 goals across their last four games, and their young core of Gauthier, Caulfield and Carlsson drove a comeback that felt bigger than one night in November.
Ottawa get two days to regroup before visiting Buffalo on Wednesday night. Anaheim travel to Vancouver on Tuesday. The Senators know the first period in Anaheim proved what they can be. The final forty minutes proved what still costs them.
