The Ducks’ 3-2 overtime loss to the Chicago Blackhawks on Friday at the Honda Center was a gut punch, no question about it. The Ducks believed they deserved better. They said they controlled the play for far too much of the game to let it slip away in the final minutes the way it did.

Ducks center Ryan Getzlaf had no problem with the way the Blackhawks’ Marian Hossa and Duncan Keith scored in the final 1 minute, 41 seconds of the third period to tie the score at 2, forcing the game to 3-on-3 OT. Getzlaf also was fine with Artem Anisimov’s winner at 1:53.

What really troubled Getzlaf after the game was his tripping penalty that changed the direction of the game. Getzlaf was whistled for striking the Blackhawks’ Andrew Shaw in the back of the leg with the Ducks leading 2-0 with 17:53 remaining in regulation.

Getzlaf entered a postgame guilty plea, but he believed Shaw should have been penalized for embellishment on the play. Shaw hit the ice as if he had been hit much, much harder and that angered the Ducks’ captain, who is no fan of such exaggerated responses.

Embellishment simply is not in the Ducks’ playbook.

“It frustrates me at any time,” Getzlaf said. “Over the years, I’ve seen some of our guys do it. I’ve talked to them. I don’t believe in it at all. That’s a competitive advantage or whatever they’re going to use for an excuse. It just takes away from the integrity of the game.”

Compounding matters, Getzlaf was clipped by an errant high stick on a faceoff moments before he was penalized and was bloodied. The cut, in the middle of the eyebrow over his left eye, required several stitches to mend after the game. He couldn’t say how many.

Instead of hitting the ice and embellishing a legitimate injury and perhaps drawing a penalty, Getzlaf skated on. At least until he was penalized, anyway. He then went to the dressing room to stop the bleeding. Right wing Corey Perry served the penalty in place of Getzlaf.

Hossa then scored on a 6-on-4 situation at 18:19 of the third, with Blackhawks goalie Corey Crawford pulled in favor of a sixth attacker. Keith then tied it at 19:33, again with Crawford on the bench and a sixth skater on the ice.

“I don’t know whose stick got me,” Getzlaf said. “Those are those plays that happen when you’re in a scrum, in a faceoff, that don’t always get called. I’m never going to go down or anything like that. So, I really don’t know whose stick hit me.”

Getzlaf bristled when asked if the Ducks might be wise to embellish their reactions now and again in order to better keep pace with players such as Shaw, who has a developed a reputation for over-reacting to hits in order to draw the whistle of a referee.

“I’ll never do that,” Getzlaf said. “There’s nothing in my makeup that will allow me to do that. I think it’s a tough part of the game. The referees are at the will of the guys and what they’re going to do. I can’t blame them. They can’t see how things happen and what goes on.”