In Nashville, Juuse Saros made 31 saves in a 5-1 win for the Predators over the San Jose Sharks on Saturday.
Tommy Novak hit for a double in the win.
“[Novak] has tremendous hockey sense and feel for the game with some vision and creativity,” Predators coach Andrew Brunette said. “As long as he puts the effort away from the puck in, he’s a really good player. He sees things that not too many players see in our league. It’s a really good skillset. We’ve just got to get him always in that 200-foot game. I think he’s worked really hard at it, especially since we started here this year, so it’s fun to see him get rewarded.”
Samuel Fagemo scored off the power play at 17:15 of the first period for a 1-0 lead to the Sharks.
With two minutes gone in the middle frame, Novak hit for his first of the night, and a 2-0 advantage.
“We felt good last year and then early this year, it feels like we’re maybe leaving some plays and not creating as much as we’d like,” Novak said. “Today was a good step for us, I think. We made some plays, had some looks and got on the board a couple of times, so it was definitely nice.”
Kiefer Sherwood a extended the lead to 3-0 just 12 seconds later.
“There’s never an easy game in this League,” Sherwood said. “We knew they were going to come out hungry and fast. Obviously, they were going to push extra hard to get their first win, so we needed to play our game. It took us a little bit, but we were able to establish our identity.”
Novak added his second of the game to balloon the advantage to 4-0 at 2:47 of the third..
Tomas Hertl scored midway through the third to get the Sharks on the board at 4-1.
“I thought we played a pretty good game, and in the second, we stopped playing for one minute and it kind of changed the game,” Sharks forward Tomas Hertl said. “Even after that, I thought the 20 minutes in the second period, we got some good looks. We should score some goals. The power play finally looks better. But it still is not enough.”
Nashville’s Luke Evangelista scored at 13″26 for the 5-1 final.
“It feels good to finally get on the board and contribute to a couple of wins, back-to-back,” Evangelista said. “I was happy to get the ball rolling a little bit [in a 4-1 win against the New York Rangers on Thursday], and finally get on the sheet. Just finally burying one, hopefully, I can just keep the momentum going in the next couple of games.”
Mackenzie Blackwood made 27 saves in the Sharks loss.
“Our inability to execute for 60 minutes is pretty apparent,” Sharks forward Nico Sturm said. “We do a lot of good things, but we don’t do it the whole game. That’s costly in the National Hockey League, right? I mean you see good things every once in a while. We’ve got phases where it looks really good. Today, the shot differential was better, but then, we do other things worse than we did the last game.”
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