Anaheim coach Greg Cronin had a question for Troy Terry before the Ducks faced the Arizona Coyotes on Wednesday night.
On a team that has three of the top 30 scorers in the NHL, how come Terry wasn’t one of them?
Terry got the first-year coach’s message and answered the challenge. The right wing scored with 1:33 remaining on the clock in overtime to complete the second hat trick of his career as the Ducks rallied to beat the Coyotes 4-3 for their fifth straight win.
“I couldn’t be happier that we’ve been playing games. But selfishly, I’ve wanted to contribute more,” Terry said. “I was hoping that I can start putting these home and kind of take us to another level and hopefully add some more scoring.”
Terry had a career-high four points on the night. He started the night with a pair of power-play goals in the first period and assisted on Leo Carlsson’s third-period tally, which sent the game into overtime.
It also gave Anaheim its longest winning streak in two years.
The Ducks are also the fourth team in NHL history to have four victories in the first 10 games where they have trailed in the third period. The others were Columbus (2021-22), Tampa Bay (2013-14), Detroit (2008-09) and Toronto (1934-35).
“They’re starting to figure it out and they’re able to transfer the practice stuff, and I think they can identify why we do certain things,” Cronin said about his young squad. “Hopefully they continue to learn and build strength and confidence. And we can keep this going.”
It was also Anaheim’s third hat trick of the young season. Frank Vatrano has the other two. It was the fourth time a Ducks’ skater has completed a hat trick with an OT goal.
Lawson Crouse scored twice and Logan Cooley got his first NHL goal for Arizona, which has dropped two of its last three.
Lukas Dostal stopped 32 shots for Anaheim.
Carlsson evened it at 3 at 4:01 of the third when redirected Terry’s shot past Vejmelka.
J.J. Moser had two assists and Vejmelka made 25 saves for the Coyotes.
Anaheim had a 2-0 lead 9:35 into the game after Terry’s second power-play goal. Rookie defenseman Pavel Mintyukov hit the far post on a breakaway attempt, but Terry knocked in the rebound for his fourth of the season.
Arizona though rallied to tie it on goals by Crouse and Cooley.
Cooley scored his first NHL goal at 14:51 to even it at 2. He got the pass from Moser near the blue line, skated past Anaheim defenseman Jackson LaCombe and went top shelf on Dostal.
“In the moment, it was the best feeling ever, it felt like I was on Cloud 9 there for a little bit, but I would’ve taken the win over that any day of the week,” Cooley said about the goal. “It’s good to get off my shoulders, and now I can just play, and focus on tomorrow’s game.”
The Coyotes led 3-2 after 40 minutes when Crouse put in a rebound at 14:25 of the second period. It was the seventh career multi-goal game in the forward’s eight-year NHL career.
“I think we had a tough start. We battled back. We came back in the game, and we even had a lead I think,” Arizona coach Andrè Tourigny said. “We could expect to win in that type of situation. I did not like the way we played when we were under attack, and we need to be comfortable being uncomfortable and we were not today.”
