It’s seemingly always the ugly goals that crush the spirit.
On Wednesday night in St Louis, the Nashville Predators’ Vernon Fiddler scored what was the game-winner off a broken play along the right boards and tapped in the loose 
puck for a 4-3 Predators’ win over the Blues.
“It was just a quick transition,” Fiddler said. “I saw [Austin] Watson kind of get it in his feet outside and just tried to get to the net. He made a little flip pass and I just got a piece of it and just chipped it over the goalie. Lucky one.”
The Preds built a 3-1 lead on goals from P.K. Subban, Colin Wilson and Filip Forsberg.
Subban had three points on the night.
“I try to live up to what I’m paid to do,” Subban said. “I just try to step up and lead by example on the ice and do my job and today I got lucky a couple times, the puck went in for me.”
Colton Parayko had an early goal for the Blues and Jaden Schwartz and Vladimir Sobotka scored in the third period to rally St Louis to a 3-3 tie.
“I liked the pushback,” Blues head coach Mike Yeo said. “I liked the fact we came out the way that we did. Certainly some things we can learn from that, but the reality is, the second period was not good enough. Ultimately it cost us the game.”
Pekka Rinne made 27 saves to pick up his fifth win of the post season against no losses.
“It’s only Game 1, so we’ve got to look to the next game. We’ve been in this position before in the second round and it’s tough. There’s only eight teams left, every shift is so important. I expect that team to have their best game next game, so we have to be ready,” Subban said.
[WATCH: All Blues vs. Predators highlights | RELATED: Complete St. Louis vs. Nashville series coverage]
Jake Allen took the loss on 28 saves.
“Guys fought back great,” Allen said after the loss. “A little mistake by me cost us. … I did what I wanted to do.”
Allen tried to poke the errant puck away from Fiddler on the game-winner but missed.
Nashville’s Kevin Fiala was taken to a local hospital after being checked and hitting the boards; his left leg appeared injured and there was no word or update after the game.
“I don’t think anybody could’ve thought or planned an incident like that with Kevin, and yet our guys, you could hear them on the bench when it happened, making sure their next shift was going to be a good one for Kevin,” Preds head coach Peter Laviolette said. “It was just one of those unfortunate incidents that happened in a game.”
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