Jakob Silfverberg scored the lone goal for the Ducks, who leaned heavily on John Gibson to keep this game respectable for 59 minutes. The 23-year-old netminder was sensational at times and made consecutive highlight-reel saves in the second period. The loss dropped Anaheim's record this season to 28-17-10 (66 points).
"I thought we did a lot of the things we talked about doing," said defenseman Cam Fowler. "Not the result we were looking for. Hard not to be discouraged with the result. When you look back at it, I thought we did a lot of good things. Maybe we could've put a little more traffic in front of Lundqvist. A few too many mistakes with the puck. All in all, I thought it was a solid effort."
Oscar Lindberg, Mats Zuccarello and Michael Grabner scored for the Rangers, who have won five consecutive games against the Ducks dating to Jan. 7, 2015. The victory improved the Blueshirts to 34-18-1 (69 points) overall this season. Lundqvist, meanwhile, bumped his record to 24-13-1 in 40 games this season.
Although the Ducks had all the pressure in the opening four minutes of the game, the Rangers were the ones who struck first on an opportunistic scoring chance at the goalmouth from Lindberg at the 4:01 mark of the first period. It was the second goal of the season for the 25-year-old Swede, who had 13 goals in 68 games last season.
Anaheim's best chance in the first period came on the stick of Brandon Montour, who snuck down low to get off a point-blank chance on Lundqvist, who alertly hugged the shortside post to shoulder the shot into the corner.
The Ducks did everything but score during the opening 20 minutes of play, and went to the locker room with a 16-6 shots advantage.
Second periods have been an eyesore for the Ducks all season, and they were burned yet again - this time at the 1:06 mark when Zuccarello scored his 11th goal of the season on a bad-angle shot from the right corner to put the Rangers up 2-0.
Gibson made two highlight-reel saves on the shifts that followed, first with a glove save on Grabner that had the home crowd in awe. He followed it up with an outstanding blocker save on a quick-developing 2-on-1 that began when Fowler lost an edge at the blue line. Derek Stepan threaded a pass under the stick of Kevin Bieksa and onto the tape of Jimmy Vesey, whose snap shot was denied by Gibson's blocker at the decisive moment.