Canes edge Predators

A three-goal third period lifted the Carolina Hurricanes over the Predators in Nashville on Monday night.

James Reimer made 31 saves to get he win and hand the Predas their first loss of the season.

“It’s good to feel the puck,” Reimer said. “Like I always say, it’s nice to get shots as long as they don’t go in. It felt good to get into the game and make some saves and kind of get a feel for the quickness of the game and how things will go now that it’s game time.”

Viktor Arvidsson scored for the Predators.

“There was definitely chances,” Nashville’s Filip Forsberg (goal) said. “It was a good game. I thought we deserved to win. I thought we played a lot better than we did [in a 5-2 win against Columbus on Saturday]. It’s a funny game, hockey. You play OK and you win, and then you play great and you lose. We had chances. We have to bear down better on those, and we’ll be looking to do that [against Carolina on Tuesday].”

Andrei Svechnikov, Sebastian Aho and Vincent Trocheck added a goal and assist each to the scoresheet.

“We played last year all year together,” Svechnikov said. “I thought we got some chemistry from last year, and I know where [Aho] is going to be and he knows where I’m going to be, so that makes it easy on us. We feel each other very well.”

Nino Niederreiter added an empty-net goal to seal the win.

“He (Svechnikov) wants the puck,” Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “Obviously that was just a high-end play all the way around. His goal was a high-end goal. I don’t think people realize how hard that is, what he’s doing over there on that off side to catch and turn and fire it that hard. It’s a skill set not many guys can do. Obviously he was the difference-maker tonight.”

Pekka Rinne made 20 saves in the loss.

“We’ve got to take some lessons,” Nashville coach John Hynes said. “There are several things we need to do a little bit better, our rush defense and our transition to defense where we gave up some of those odd-man rushes. But I thought there was a lot of good minutes and we’ve got to build on some of the positives as we’ve got the same team [Tuesday].”