OTTAWA (AP) -Ryan Getzlaf's first goal of the season ended up being an important one.

Getzlaf scored Anaheim's third second-period goal in his return to the lineup and the Ducks held on for a 4-3 victory over the Ottawa Senators on Friday night.

Brian Sutherby, Todd Marchant and Sammy Pahlsson also scored for Anaheim, and Jonas Hiller stopped 27 shots in his second start of the season.

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Getzlaf, who missed Tuesday's 3-2 shootout win in Toronto because of a gum infection, scored on a power play at 10:57 to make it 4-0.

``I hoped that it wouldn't make the difference, but obviously we let things slip a little bit,' Getzlaf said.

Hiller carried a shutout into the third, when Ottawa captain Daniel Alfredsson scored the first of three straight Senators goals. Alexandre Picard followed Alfredsson with another power-play goal and Chris Neil cut Anaheim's lead to one with 9:12 remaining in the game.

``We tried hard - we worked hard,' said Ducks coach Randy Carlyle, whose team has won three of four since getting off to an 0-4 start. ``We stayed with our structure. We got a little bit sloppy into the neutral ice as the game wore on, a little too much stuff on our backhand, but I thought we pretty much stayed with the course and we got it out in the end.'

Alex Auld made 28 saves in his second start for Ottawa, which has lost three straight.

``I think he played solid,' Alfredsson said. ``The first goal, you can't do anything. The second, nobody knew what happened. The third one, we lose a battle in front. He played solid, no question.'

The Senators went 1-4 on their five-game homestand and fell to 2-4-1 overall.

``We've just got to be more aggressive,' Alfredsson said. ``We've got to go out and win games instead of waiting for a good break for something to happen. Once we're behind, we play pretty darned good, so we've just got to get off to better starts.'

Sutherby put the Ducks ahead in the first. Auld left a rebound at his feet after Brad May fired a one-timer, and Sutherby put the puck into an open side.

Marchant scored a bizarre unassisted goal early in the second to make it 2-0.

``I don't even know how that one went in,' Carlyle said.

He was hardly alone.

Ottawa defenseman Jason Smith gloved a puck flipped down the ice by Teemu Selanne from the left side of the Ducks' zone. As Smith began to drop the puck, Marchant skated into the right side of the Senators' zone and batted it out of midair, where it floated toward the goal and past Auld just 50 seconds into the middle period.

``I looked at it on the replay after the game and I'm actually looking away when it went into the net,' Marchant said. ``I had no idea, so it's just a fluke break, whatever it is, those are things you need to have happen for your team to get out of its bad spell, and tonight we were able to hang on for a big win.'

Alfredsson scored his third goal on a 5-on-3 just 12 seconds after Nathan McIver was sent off for hooking with Ducks captain Scott Niedermayer already in the penalty box.

Notes: Hiller appeared in 23 games as a rookie last season, including 18 starts. ... The Ducks last six penalties were all hooking calls, including four in the second period in addition to the costly pair of penalties in the third. ... Auld made 30 saves in a 3-1 road win over Pittsburgh in Stockholm on Oct. 5 in the second game of the Senators' season-opening series in Sweden.