"We deserved to win this game," Cogliano said. "It was one of our best games of the season in terms of how we competed. We could've gotten down on ourselves after letting the first goal in. We played a great game. We kept playing."
Anaheim had several more chances in a second period in which they outshot Edmonton 16-3, but the Cogliano strike was all they would get.
That was until Ritchie came through early in the third to blow the roof off an over-capacity Honda Center, a crowd that got even louder as that puck slid down into the Edmonton end in the waning seconds of a thrilling game.
They watched the Ducks qualify for the Western Conference Final for the fifth time in franchise history. It's also their second trip to the Conference Finals in the last three years (joining only Tampa Bay and Pittsburgh, 2), their fourth since 2006 (joining only Chicago, 5, and Pittsburgh, 4) and their fifth since 2003 (joining only Chicago and Pittsburgh, 5).
"The turning point in the game for us was our fourth line went out and got us a grind shift in the second period," Ducks coach Randy Carlyle said of the unit of Jared Boll, Nate Thompson, and Chris Wagner. "Every other line after that until the end of the second period followed that up. We had them on the run. We were out-changing them, had some momentum swings and our crowd really got into it.
"I have to credit those guys for their effort and what they did in that specific situation. We had a real solid second period and our fans got really emotionally involved, and so did our players. We did it in the right way."
The Ducks erased a 0-2 series deficit for the first time in club history. Prior to Anaheim's series win, NHL teams had an all-time series record of 48-309 when losing the first two games of a series (13.4%).