ANAHEIM — In their biggest victory of the season to date, the Ducks dominated early and rallied late to beat the NHL-leading Winnipeg Jets, 3-2, on a Troy Terry goal with 24.2 seconds left on Wednesday night at Honda Center.

The Ducks had won just one of their previous six games while the Jets entered the evening with the league’s best point total and best goal differential. That didn’t stop the Ducks from dominating possession, scoring chances and nearly every barometer for most of a match that saw them circle the wagons and surmount a 2-1 deficit with two goals in the final 4:46.

After focusing on the minutiae of their play during a rocky stretch, the Ducks have won consecutive games for the first time in nearly a month, following Saturday’s overtime victory in Columbus with Wednesday’s rousing triumph.

“You need wins to actually validate the process. You need to have these wins that are going to give the guys the confidence and the belief – belief is huge – that they can win,” Ducks coach Greg Cronin said. “Tonight was one of those games.”

Frank Vatrano scored two goals and assisted on Terry’s game-winner. Captain Radko Gudas set up both of Vatrano’s goals. Lukáš Dostál made 21 saves and aided a clutch penalty kill shortly before Terry deposited the game-winner.

Gabriel Vilardi and Mark Scheifele each scored for Winnipeg. Backup goalie Eric Comrie made 28 saves.

After being hectored for two periods, the more familiar Jets showed up in the closing frame, sustaining pressure early and tilting the ice in their favor early before the Ducks drew even late and then scored in the dying embers of the tilt.

After a monstrous hit by Jacob Trouba helped break up the Jets’ possession, the Ducks went the other way and forechecked aggressively. That culminated in Vatrano’s disruption of Haydn Fleury’s pass, which went directly to Terry, who waited out Comrie to sweep in the winner with 24.2 seconds remaining.

“I was the first guy in [on the forecheck] and then the puck came up the wall, so I just made my way back to the front. Frank is such a good forechecker, he was able to just get a stick on it,” Terry said. “When the puck came to me, I knew where everyone was, they were in the corner that I was just coming from, so my first instinct was to hold onto it and take it to the far side where I knew there was space.”

In addition to Troubas’ check, the Ducks killed a penalty that expired with 1:19 left in the game and later quelled a frantic six-on-five sequence, which ended with Dostál poke-checking the puck off of Vilardi’s stick on a breakaway in the game’s final gasp.

“The last 30 seconds were so hectic, with everything, but, overall, I think that might have been one of if not our best game all year,” Terry said.

With 4:46 left in regulation, Vatrano flicked a shot from the blue line that caromed off Winnipeg forward Vladislav Namestnikov’s stick and then the ice surface before knuckling into the net. Whether Vatrano called “bank” or not, it was his second goal of the game, ninth of the season and his seventh in his past 11 appearances.

“I’ve been like that my whole career. I’ll go through slumps and then score in bunches,” Vatrano said. “At the end of the day, you don’t have to worry about scoring, you’ve got to worry about the things that get you scoring goals.”

Early in the third period of a tie game, the Ducks weathered a pair of defensive breakdowns thanks to Dostál, but could not survive a third as the Jets took their first lead of the night with 15:47 to play.

Kyle Connor’s intrepid foray began behind his own net and continued as he broke down the Ducks through the neutral zone, skating to the right circle and dishing deftly to Scheifele for a one-timer.

“We got a little bit negligent with the puck in the third period, and they took advantage of it. They’re a team that makes you pay if you turn it over and give them odd-man rushes,” Cronin said.

The Ducks’ momentum from the first period carried over into the second but a Ross Johnston roughing penalty cracked the door open for an equalizer.

Just nine seconds after Johnston was sent to the box for throwing a jab, the NHL’s top-ranked power play knotted the score at 1-1, 24 seconds past the game’s midpoint. Nikolaj Ehlers, who played for the first time since Nov. 29, sent a puck into the crease that first struck Vilardi in the leg and then was easily pushed across the line by the former King, who’d gotten early position on Gudas. Vilardi’s 14 goals put him on pace to cruise past his career high of 23.

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“We had complete control of the game and then they scored that goal. It happened so quickly, I think that kind of stunned us for a little bit,” Cronin said.

Seven seconds after Ryan Strome and Jackson LaCombe pieced together the kind of successive-scoring-chance sequence that typified the Ducks’ start to the game but not the season, the Ducks finally broke through. A point shot from Gudas was tipped home by Vatrano to open the scoring.

The first period brought 20 of the best minutes of the Ducks’ season as they registered the first 10 shots on goal of the game and had tripled up the Jets’ shot total, 12-4, at the first intermission. Yet either Comrie or the posts flanking him had the answer for all the Ducks’ bids, including three of the frame’s four high-danger chances recorded by Natural Stat Trick.

“The first two periods were like textbook hockey in terms of moving the puck vertically and keeping it simple,” Cronin said. “They’re a heck of a hockey team, and you can’t mess around with the puck against Winnipeg. We stuck to our plan.”