NASHVILLE, Tenn – The tension, anxiety and drama of Game 6 are squarely on the shoulders of the Nashville Predators who seemingly took a night off in Game 5 when they lost 6-0 to the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Photo by Don.Haas@prohockeynews.com
Asked what was needed for Game 6 on his home ice, Predators head coach Peter Laviolette was direct in his response.
“Well, speed would be one of it, right? They were quicker,” Laviolette said. “There were some things that we talked about internally in the room. We’ll look to make those adjustments tomorrow. But we’ve got to play a better game, generally speaking, but I’m not going to go into too much detail about anything we went over here today.”
The series has been focused on the home side with each team holding serve at home.
And the Predators need to keep that trend rolling Sunday night as they face elimination down 3-2 to the Pens.
Nashville is facing a Pens club that win three elimination games last season and have the experience of being able to avoid the loss while keeping a series going.
Laviolette was asked how that impacts his team and Game 6.
“A couple things. On the question, I think you can gain experience. You can recall on experiences that you’ve had in the past and try to use those to build moving forward,” he said. “Just with regard to our team not playing well, we’ve had a real honest group in here, and when the game that we played isn’t the game that we’re looking for, there’s usually a good response.
“I said it last night, and even after meeting with the guys today, we’ve got a lot of confidence in our group to be better, to get better, and to play a good game. I don’t think that there’s any searching going on in there on how we’re going to do this or what needs to take place,” Laviolette e added. “We need to play a better game. We’ve proven that we can and we have in the past, and there’s a lot of confidence that we will in a couple days.”
It would be difficult not to play a better game as Nashville was made to look unfit for the Stanley Cup Final series in Game 5.
Game 6 is set for Bridgestone Arena at 7 PM Central Time.
You must be logged in to post a comment.