Ducks, Giguere trade roles in win

With a sheepish grin after 65 minutes of work, some of which wouldn’t go down as his best, Ducks goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere acknowledged he was saved Sunday night.

Giguere didn’t have to make many saves, and particularly didn’t make one he should have made, leaving his teammates to do most of the heavy lifting against the Nashville Predators.

So it was fitting when Martin Erat’s shot rang off the right post that the veteran goalie smiled at the good fortune and breathed a sigh of relief as the Ducks walked off with a 3-2 shootout win in front of an announced sellout of 17,174 at the Honda Center.

A battle between two Western Conference powers lost some luster when Central Division-leading Nashville trotted out a less-than-ideal lineup after having played the Kings the day before.

Peter Forsberg sat out his first game since being acquired from Philadelphia on Feb. 15 because of an undisclosed upper-body injury. The Predators’ tremendous offensive depth was also diminished as David Legwand, Jason Arnott and Steve Sullivan also sat out with various ailments.

Not surprisingly, the Ducks (39-17-11) dominated most of the game but never led in regulation and couldn’t put the Predators away until Ryan Getzlaf and Teemu Selanne opened the shootout with goals against goalie Tomas Vokoun.

“I think we were fortunate the lineup that we had to play against tonight was depleted,” Ducks Coach Randy Carlyle said. “It would have been a much taller task to come back from a 2-0 [deficit] if they would have had their regular lineup.”

The Ducks, who pulled eight points ahead of Dallas in the Pacific Division, went to work after spotting Nashville that lead on goals by Kimmo Timonen and J.P. Dumont. Their persistent effort created a 35-14 advantage in shots.

Selanne started the comeback in the first minute of the second period with his team-leading 39th goal as he finished a two-on-one rush with Andy McDonald. Dustin Penner tied it at 3 minutes 26 seconds of the third with his fifth goal in four games on a deflection of a point shot from Chris Pronger. Penner’s goal-scoring streak is the longest by a Ducks rookie and his 24 goals are the most.

“They picked me up a little bit today,” said Giguere, who had to make only 12 saves. “Sometimes in the course of a season, a goalie’s going to be unbelievable and win a game on his own. Other times, he’ll have a tougher night and guys are going to come up big for him. Tonight, I’ve got to give credit to the guys. They could have hung their heads and said the goalie doesn’t have it. ... [But] they kept being positive and working hard.”

But first they had to dig out of a hole after a first period that Giguere would like to forget.

Nashville (44-18-5), which leads the conference with 93 points, had only six shots in the opening period but two, by Timonen and Dumont, went in the net -- Dumont’s goal coming only four seconds before intermission.

Afterward, Giguere said he thought he might be yanked between periods. But Carlyle said that, because of the timing of Dumont’s goal, pulling the goalie wouldn’t have benefited the team.

“You owe that to your veteran players and to people who’ve worked hard for you all year,” Carlyle said. “As I’ve stated before, I do it 99.9% of the time because I think it’ll have an effect on the other 19 guys.”

eric.stephens@latimes.com