In Nashville, the Predators took a 3-0 lad over the visiting Winnipeg Jets on Sunday evening, and then held them off for a 3-2 win.
The win was the Preds’ fifth straight.
“I think we’ve got a little bit of a recipe now of how we want to win games, how we want to prepare and approach games,” Nashville’s Ryan McDonagh said. “It certainly wasn’t perfect at times tonight, and it hasn’t been perfect on the winning streak as well, but you’ve got to find ways to win games. That’s a great sign there. We know we can be better, and we’ll keep improving, and it’ll hopefully lead to some more consistency.”
The Predators improved to 10-10-0.
Juuse Saros made 32 saves for the victory..
Nashville took a 1-0 lead with 20 seconds left in the first period on a marker from Yakov Trenin.
Roman Josi extended the lead to 2-0 with 76 seconds gone in the middle frame.
“I kind of got lucky on that goal,” Josi said. “I just threw it at the net. I think I had better chances before, but it goes in. Obviously, I want to produce, but if we’re winning and I don’t produce, then I’m totally fine with that. But if we don’t win, it’s definitely a part of my game. It’s been awesome, the whole system I think. It’s been great and really fast.”
Gustav Nyquist pushed the advantage out to 3-0 with a power play strike at 6:22 of the second.
“I think [Nyquist] is having fun,” Predators coach Andrew Brunette said. “I think their line (Forsberg, Ryan O’Reilly) is really enjoying each other. They play off of each other. They’re always talking, always thinking, so I think they enjoy it. I think the joy level with that group is pretty special, and you can see it on the ice.”
The Jets dropped to 12-6-2.
“Give [Saros] a lot of credit, we came out of the gate hard,” Winnipeg coach Rick Bowness said. “Just great for 14 minutes, and I thought the last six minutes of [the first period] we started turning the pucks over when there was no need to turn pucks over inside their blue line. Then they got their game going. We got our game going because we were going north and we just kept pushing it back and taking what they were giving us, but the last six minutes of that period we started to try to make cute plays that just weren’t there.”
The Jets rallied on two goals in the third.
Josh Morrissey and Cole Perfetti were the third period strikers for the Jets.
Morrissey trimmed the deficit to 3-1 midway through the third, and Perfetti hit off the power play with 42 seconds left on the game clock for the 3-2 final.
“They just clogged the middle a lot,” Perfetti said. “We had a tough time getting in through the neutral zone. When we did get it in behind their [defensemen], it was one of those nights where they just kind of found a way to break out every single time, whether it was puck bounces or them making nice plays.”
Laurent Brossoit made 23 saves in the loss.
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