The sweep of the NHL from Friday night starts in Nashville where the Predators debuted P.K. Subban on the blueline.
Subban scored on the power play to help the Predators to a 3-2 win over the Chicago Blackhawks.
Roman Josi and Mike Fisher added goals for the Predators in their season opener.
“I wasn’t even thinking about anything like that coming into the game,” Subban said. “Just wanted to kind of get back into it. Even though I had a couple of preseason games, it’s been almost six months since you’ve played in a real game that means something, so for me, I wanted to get my feet under me and play hard and play physical and just try to do whatever the coaching staff asks me to do.”
Fisher’s goal was the game-winner and came in the second period.
“[The power play] was great,” Fisher said. “Johansen did a great job on the half wall, our [defensemen] were shooting, find lanes, heads-up plays. On all of the goals, we had guys in front. That was the difference in the game.”
Marcus Kruger and Niklas Hjalmarsson scored for the Hawks who fell to 0-2-0 on the season.
“Certainly we’ve got to have better discipline, stay out of the box as well,” Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville said. “We still could’ve had some offense that could’ve gotten us back in there and got an equalizer, but we didn’t generate enough.”
In Calgary, the Edmonton Oilers are wishing they had the Calgary Flames on the schedule more often.
On Friday, the Oilers hung a second loss on the Flames in a 5-3 win.
Connor McDavid had a goal and three points on the night to lead the Oilers’ offense.
Leon Draisaitl scored twice in the win.
“It’s very big for our confidence,” Draisaitl said. “I think the last couple of years we didn’t really get off to a good start. We never really caught up to that. It’s nice to start off that way and get a little bit of confidence going. It’s big for us.”
Cam Talbot made 32 save to pick up the second win on the year for him.
Jordan Eberle and Mark Letestu added goals for the Oilers.
The Flames got their goals from Sean Monahan, Michael Frolik, and Jyrki Jokipakka.
Brian Elliot took the loss in the Flames net on 28 saves.
“With [coach Glen Gulutzan], he wants to open up our systems a little bit from last year, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to play run-and-gun, that doesn’t mean we’re just going to play wide open,” Flames forward Troy Brouwer said. “We still have to have a lot of our structure and we’re getting away from that right now.”
In Los Angeles, the visiting Philadelphia Flyers got two goals from Sean Couturier in a 4-2 road win over the Kings Friday.
Boyd Gordon and Mark Streit had the other two goals for the Flyers.
“We know we can be a productive line, and tonight was a good example of a lot of support and a lot of chances we got,” Couturier said.
LA’s Jeff Zatkoff was hung with the loss on 26 saves in his first Kings start.
Zatkoff is number one for the Kings with Jonathan Quick out for extended period of time with a lower-body injury sustained in the opening period of season opener in San Jose this week.
“We were turning over pucks. We were giving up odd-man rushes. We had a few bad changes. There were a few things that went wrong, and it was an awful period. It was one of the worst periods we’ve played as a team in a long time,” Drew Doughty said after the game.
Doughty and Brayden McNabb scored for the Kings.
The Kings are 0-2-0 to start the season.
“The one in San Jose [on Wednesday] was close, but not nearly as good as we have to play. Tonight, the second period was not good, and we’ve got to definitely be better,” Anze Kopitar said of the Kings’ efforts to start the season.
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