In the three-game sweep of the NHL we start in New York where Henrik Lundqvist made 31 saves to shutout the Nashville Predators, 3-0.
These days that’s not a big accomplishment as the Preds have been shutout in three straight games and have not scored a goal in 213+ minutes of hockey.
“You try to work through it, but when it happens three times in a row, you’re getting pretty frustrated,” Predators coach Peter Laviolette said.
Rick Nash, Derek Stepan and Kevin Hayes scored for the Rangers who improved to 16-3-2.
“Our goalie was unbelievable again,” Nash said. “It seems to be a trend every single night that he’s our best player.”
For Nashville, it is not an issue of effort; they have gotten shots off but have run into hot goalies and good defense in the skid.
“We’ve got to find a way to stay with it. We can’t get frustrated,” Predators captain Shea Weber said. “It’s tough to say that when you haven’t scored in three games.”
“I don’t think that they’re not trying to put it in the net when you end up with 30 quality chances out of 75, 80 attempts at the net,” Laviolette said. “The guys are trying to score, and it’s not dropping right now. They worked their tails of tonight and again it didn’t go our way.”
The Rangers were outshot 25-7 through two periods but had 12 in the third.
“That means a lot to the team, knowing that we’re finding our game as the game moves on,” Lundqvist said. “We don’t get hurt, and then we make them pay.”
In Buffalo, Robby Fabbri scored for the St Louis with a little over six minutes left in regulation to give the Blues a 2-1 win over the Sabres.
“I’ll take it any way it comes. I know a lot of the guys feel that way,” Fabbri said. “I was lucky to get that bounce, and we’ve just got to keep it going.
“I didn’t know where the puck was and I was just spinning around and I looked and saw it was in the net and I put my hands up. I didn’t know who put it in or if it was me or not. It was something crazy like that.”
Troy Brouwer had scored earlier in the third to tie the game up at one.
“For the first two periods, we were looking for something easier and it wasn’t there,” Blues coach Ken Hitchcock said. “They weren’t going to go away. They’ve got great structure, they’ve got speed, they’ve got tenacity, they’ve got size, and they are starting to mature. So you’re going to have to pay a price to beat them. They are not going to give anything easy. We had to dig in a lot deeper than we were going and we did in the third period.”
David Legwand had given the Sabres a 1-0 lead in the second period.
“I thought his line did a great job,” Sabres coach Dan Bylsma said. “They had three or four momentum shifts for us. They go out; [Nicolas Deslauriers] did a lot of the heavy lifting winding it up there. Yes, good to see [Legwand] get on the scoresheet.”
I Toronto, the visiting the Boston Bruins could not hold a 2-0 lead early or a 3-2 lead late and needed a skills competition to finally beat the Maple Leafs, 4-3.
It was a third straight win for the Bruins and second straight loss for the Leafs.
Boston is riding the suddenly hot Brad Marchand who had two goals on the night.
“I think he is playing more of a straight-line game taking pucks to the net,” Boston coach Claude Julien said. “He is chipping and chasing pucks. At one point when he was struggling, he was kind of stick-handling in the same spot until eventually he’d lose the puck. Now, even on faceoffs, I see him jumping so well and getting to loose pucks. Right now he’s playing the type of game we want him to play.”
Marchand has five goals in his last four games.
“I think sometimes you get the bounces and sometimes you don’t,” he said. “The biggest thing is, you want to try to stay on an even keel all the time. Right now it’s just great that we’re winning games and you want to keep going.”
Tuukka Rask had 39 saves for the win and James Reimer made 26 saves in the loss.
You must be logged in to post a comment.