The Ducks nearly scored short-handed for the third straight game, but Troy Terry was stopped twice by Allen on a breakaway just past the midway point of the first period.
Anaheim made it 2-0 at 14:24 of the first when defenseman Jackson LaCombe stepped in front of Nico Hischier to intercept a clearing pass in the New Jersey zone. Referee Tom Chmielewski signaled a penalty on Hischier just as LaCombe dove forward in the slot to sweep a pass to Vatrano in the right circle and he scored with a one-timer.
It was the first goal of the season for Vatrano, who scored 37 for the Ducks two seasons ago.
“Frankie’s a big piece of the team,” Quenneville said. “He’s one of those guys that gets going there and the pucks will start going in for him.”
Gauthier extended the lead to 3-0 at 1:54 of the second period when he scored his Anaheim-leading seventh goal of the season on a sharp-angle shot from just above the goal line that slid under Allen’s left pad as he protected the near post.
“We were just stubborn in a sense of not putting pucks behind, playing to our strength and using speed,” Devils defenseman Brenden Dillon said. “A lot of teams, they know our offense comes from our skill and our ability to make plays, so when they take that away, we continue to force it, turn the puck over (and) we make the other team look fast, and they’re already a fast team to begin with. When we play into that, you saw what happened.”
The Devils denied Dostal his third NHL shutout when Hughes scored his New Jersey-leading 10th goal of the season off a 2-on-1 rush to cut it to 3-1 at 7:43 of the third.
“All of a sudden it looks like we have the game in the bag and, the next thing you know, it’s a 3-1 hockey game and they can make the plays,” Quenneville said. “But I still thought right until the end, we did what we had to do, which is a lot of good things.”
