'That's in the garbage can.' Ducks can't stop Mitch Marner, Golden Knights in Game 3 loss

The Ducks got punched in the beak Friday.

Then they got knocked to the ice, stomped on and left licking their feathers after the first two periods of their Stanley Cup playoff game with the Vegas Golden Knights. And though they rallied in the final 20 minutes, the hole the Ducks dug for themselves was too deep to climb out of.

The final score was 6-2, with half of the goals coming from Mitch Marner's first playoff hat trick. And though it felt much more one-sided than that, the margin was more than enough to give Vegas a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven Western Conference semifinal series, which continues Sunday at the Honda Center.

"They were way better," Ducks coach Joel Quenneville said, a statement that hardly counted as a revelation. "They were desperate. They were hungry."

They were also physical. After watching the young, speedy Ducks skate circles around them in the first two games of the series, the Golden Knights adjusted and slowed Anaheim down by beating it up on the forecheck and controlling the puck better.

"I thought we got to our game more tonight," Vegas coach John Tortorella said. "It's playoff hockey. You're trying to find areas to take away ice. You're finishing your checks. We're just trying to play hard.

"That's what playoff hockey is. It's just playing hard and playing through people."

"You want to get physical," added Brayden McNabb, who blocked three shots in leading a hard-nosed back line that smothered the Ducks. "You want to get in front of them when you can."

McNabb also scored Vegas' second goal on the penalty kill, 12:13 into the first period. When Marner made it 3-0 on the power play five seconds before the first intermission even the Ducks, a team that rallied from two-goal deficits to win 10 times this season, knew they were cooked.

"Playoffs is a different beast," said Ducks winger Alex Killorn, a two-time Stanley Cup champion. "Teams, once they score, are going to play a little bit differently and protect the lead. Especially a veteran team like Vegas, who defends so well."

Quenneville considered the night the NHL playoff version of a mulligan.

"After the first period, we had miles and miles to get ourselves back in the game," he said. "I always find there is one game in a series that you can throw away. And that's in the garbage can for me."

Not for Vegas. The Golden Knights were outshot, out-possessed and outskated in the first two games at home. So on the flight to Anaheim they made some adjustments the Ducks couldn't answer.

"You just like the way that we came out and started," said Marner, who had a goal and an assist in the first period. "The first 10 minutes, really, we just played our game and got to it. And that's something I think we were missing the first two games."

Defenseman Shea Theodore, who began his NHL career in Anaheim, put Vegas in front to stay 66 seconds after the opening faceoff. Then McNabb, part of a penalty kill that has erased 21 consecutive power plays in the postseason - including all 11 of the Ducks' opportunities - doubled the lead 11 minutes later.

Marner then collected his natural hat trick with a late first-period goal and two second-period scores to make it 5-0 before the Ducks finally answered with third-period goals by Beckett Sennecke and Chris Kreider.

Brett Howden closed the scoring for Vegas with an empty-net, his sixth of the playoffs. Afterward, Tortorella said he's not done tinkering.

"There's still some things we need to clean up," he said. "Not all problems are solved because you win a game. You've got to keep on trying to get better."

For the Ducks, meanwhile, the search for a silver lining to an otherwise dark cloud settled on a third period in which the older Knights clearly ran out of steam. That opened the ice for another track meet by the young Ducks, who outshot Vegas and scored twice, matching the two scores they had in the third period of Game 2.

It was just a moral victory, to be sure. But it was a victory nonetheless.

"We could take some positives out of this game," said Killorn, a two-time Stanley Cup champion. "That's one of them. We have to be better from the start."

Quenneville came away with a different lesson, one the 14 players on his roster who are making their postseason debuts this spring, are learning on the job.

"It's only going to get harder every single game," said Quenneville, who has coached more NHL postseason games than any man not named Scotty Bowman. "Let's get ready to go to war."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

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This story was originally published May 8, 2026 at 10:03 PM.