Gauthier Hat Trick Lifts Ducks Past Senators, 6-3

Cutter Gauthier scored three times and Anaheim beat Ottawa 6-3, a rare happy night at home for a club that came in 1-4-1 there. But the real story is how close this game actually was, and how much the scoreline leaned on the Ottawa goalie.

The Ducks had the better of play, with 33 shots to Ottawa's 23, yet the quality gap was thin. Anaheim's chances were worth 2.82 expected goals (how many goals an average night of finishing would produce) against 2.49 for Ottawa. Six goals on chances worth fewer than three is a night when everything went in.

Much of it came with the man advantage: Anaheim scored four power-play goals on five chances, while Ottawa went 0 for 3.

Jonas Johansson stopped 27 of 33, and allowed about three more goals than the shots he faced should have produced. That is the gap between a tight game and a lopsided one. At the other end, Laurent Brossoit made 20 saves on 23 shots, a solid if unspectacular night.

Gauthier, on a line with Mikael Granlund and Beckett Sennecke, finished three of his five shots. Judd Caulfield added two goals and an assist alongside Leo Carlsson, who set up three.

The posts got involved too: Jake Sanderson and Thomas Chabot each rang one for Ottawa, and Nikita Nesterenko hit iron for Anaheim. For Ottawa, still third in the Atlantic, this one was mostly a goaltending night to forget.