ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) - Ondrej Kase made the most of a fortunate break for the Anaheim Ducks.
Kase scored at 4:24 of overtime, and the Ducks beat the Arizona Coyotes 3-2 on Friday night.
Kase got his fourth goal of the season after Arizona goaltender Mike Smith’s stick broke while he was trying to clear a loose puck out of the crease. The rookie forward swiped it from him and swept it past the stumbling goalie into the open net, handing the Coyotes their ninth straight loss.
“I was trying to make chicken salad out of chicken,” Smith said. “The way things are going right now, my stick breaks, I didn’t get anything on it and it ends up in the back of the net. I tried to do too much.”
Joseph Cramarossa and Chris Wagner scored for Anaheim, and John Gibson stopped 21 shots. It was the first NHL overtime goal for the 21-year-old Kase.
“I don’t know what happened,” Kase said. “I was surprised. I saw the puck and just shot it.”
It also was the first overtime win for Anaheim this season.
“We finally got the monkey off our back,” Ducks coach Randy Carlyle said. “It’s been too long and too many points that went by the wayside. Tonight we found a way to get it done. It’s nice to see a young kid, who had lots of chances in the game, deliver in overtime.”
Martin Hanzal and Oliver Ekman-Larsson scored for the Coyotes. Smith made 32 saves.
The Coyotes lost Hanzal (lower body), forward Jordan Martinook (upper body) and defenseman Jacob Chychrun (upper body) to injuries in the second and third periods.
“We battled hard,” Coyotes coach Dave Tippett said. “We were down three players in the third period. We were short-handed because of injury. We played with an unbelievable amount of desperation and hung in there. It’s too bad we couldn’t get the win.”
Ekman-Larsson tied it at 2 with a power-play goal 3:12 into the third. After a goalmouth scramble drew Gibson out of the net, Ekman-Larsson caught a rebound in the crease and swept it into the open net, past a diving Ducks defenseman.
The Ducks had grabbed a 2-1 lead on Wagner’s third of the season at 16:05 of the second. Logan Shaw won a faceoff and Wagner banked the puck off Smith’s pad through a tight opening on the near side.
Anaheim forward Corey Perry nearly ended his 10-game scoreless drought in the first period but his shot at 6:35 went off the stick of Cramarossa. Hanzal responded just 1:19 into the second period when he tipped in a feed by Anthony Duclair.
“We try so hard out there,” Ekman-Larsson said. “We played a really good game over 60 minutes. It’s frustrating when you let in two easy goals. It’s not on Smitty, he made some unbelievable saves before that. We win as a team and we lose as a team. We will have to keep working hard and try to get better for the game tomorrow.”
NOTES: Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf sat out his second straight game with a lower-body injury. … Arizona is still waiting on visa paperwork to go through for Alexander Burmistrov. The Coyotes won a waiver claim on him on Monday, but the former Winnipeg center from Russia has been stuck in Canada.
UP NEXT
Coyotes: Finish a back-to-back with the New York Islanders on Saturday at home.
Ducks: Host the Wild and former Anaheim coach Bruce Boudreau on Sunday night.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.