You cannot coach consistency; it needs to come from the players.
On Monday, two inconsistent teams of late, met in Denver as the Nashville Predators visited the Avalanche.
Nick Bonino, Viktor Arvidsson, Roman Josi and Ryan Ellis struck for the Predators as they snapped a two-game skid and handed the Avs a 4-1 loss.
Nashville improved to 29-18-4 and have been up and down for the last few weeks.
“We scored first, that’s huge for our team,” Bonino said. “We didn’t let them come down and dictate player early. We know how fast they are. This is one of the more complete games from [Rinne], he was huge when he had to be.”
Pekka Rinne made 35 saves for the win.
Alexander Kerfoot scored the lone goal for the Avs as they are now 3-9-2 over the last 14 games.
“I have no problem with the way we played today,” Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar said. “We made a couple mistakes, they capitalized. They made lots of mistakes, too. We didn’t capitalize. To me, the difference was Rinne.”
The Avs top line was held in check most of the night and was limited in their quality chances.
“Those guys are so dangerous,” Rinne said. “You know they’re going to have a couple good looks and they did tonight. We did an extremely good job playing against them.”
[WATCH: All Predators vs. Avalanche highlights]
Semyon Varlamov made 23 saves in the loss.
“There’s some positive things, but it was tough to find the back of the net. The first two periods we played really good hockey. We were creating a lot of chances. [Pekka] Rinne played really good. Some of it is our fault, too,” Mikko Rantanen said after his line was held off the scoresheet.
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