In Nashville, the Predators locked down their defense and defeated the visiting Washington Capitals, 3-1, on Saturday. 
The win was the fourth straight for the Preds.
“I don’t think we’ve really been looking at big picture,” Nashville’s Ryan McDonagh said. “It’s still a little bit early in the year, but just our approach every day is fine-tuning our game and getting the rest when we can. We’ve obviously played a lot of hockey here and haven’t had two days between a game in a while until just recently. Just trying to approach it as far as setting the tone early in games and playing with that pace as much as we can. When we find that pace, we know we’re a tough team to play against.”
Juuse Saros made 21 saves in the win.
Nashville improved to 18-13-0.
The Predators took a 1-0 lead in the opening stanza on a strike by Colton Sissons at 5:03.
“We’re finding ways to win,” Sissons said. “We’ve had games where the penalty kill stepped up huge, which we were not so happy about in the early part of the season. That’s been coming along. The power play has been scoring some timely goals. Some guys up and down the lineup have been scoring some big goals for us. All of those things kind of result in some successes along the way.”
The Caps dropped to 14-9-4.
“Besides the second period, I thought we were really sloppy with the puck,” Washington’s ‘T.J. Oshie said. “Sometimes, you’ve got to tip your hat. They were on a second half of a back-to-back, and they worked all game, won a lot of puck battles and made plays when they had them.”
Oshie tied the game, 1-1 at 5:16 of the middle frame.
Philip Tomasino restored the Nashville lead, 2-1, at 13:26 of the second.
“I feel like I’ve been having some pretty good chances recently,” Tomasino said. “I’ve been saying I’ve had a lot of breakaways in my career, and I don’t think I’ve scored one yet, so that was nice to get that one out of the way.”
Nashville’s Yakov Trenin scored at 3:41 of the third off a onep0handed effort to make it 3-1 for the final count.
Charlie Lindgren made 20 saves in the loss.
“I felt like guys were fighting the puck,” Capitals coach Spencer Carbery said. “From our back end, especially fighting the puck. So, they have a tough night back there, and then even offensively with a lot of situations that you see that we get into, there’s just not quite that last couple of plays to finish or to get the puck to the middle of the rink.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.