Pierre-Luc Dubois had a goal and two assists, Alex Ovechkin had three assists, and Logan Thompson made 25 saves for the Capitals (43-14-8), who have won five in a row.

“I liked a lot of the things we did tonight,” Washington coach Spencer Carbery said. “I think (Anaheim) is a good team. It’s hard to check them for 60 minutes and limit what they get because they are just so fast, they are so skilled and so shifty that they are going to break you down.”

Pavel Mintyukov and Frank Vatrano each had a goal and an assist, Jacob Trouba and Drew Helleson also scored, and Lukas Dostal made 36 saves for Anaheim (28-29-7), which has lost three of four.

“It’s terrible that we lost the game,” Ducks coach Greg Cronin said. “For me, it’s one of those games you can build on as a coach. We still will, but it adds more confidence to it when you win the game. But, we’ll learn from it and we’ll move forward. We have no time to really lick our wounds, we’ve got to get ready for Utah (on Wednesday).”

The Capitals took their fourth lead of the game at 13:25 of the third period when Nic Dowd buried a rebound off the rush to make it 5-4.

Anthony Beauvillier, who was acquired by the Capitals from the Pittsburgh Penguins on Friday, scored on a breakaway with 1:36 left to make it 6-4.

Protas then scored into an empty net with 17 seconds left for the 7-4 final.

Ovechkin, who is nine goals from passing Wayne Gretzky for the most in NHL history (894), had room to shoot the puck, but opted to pass it to the wide open Protas for his first NHL hat trick.

“I just saw the eye contact with ‘Ovi,’ ” Protas said. “With an unreal accomplishment coming up and he makes that play, and how happy he is for me, that says everything about him as a teammate.”