In Nashville, Juuso Parssinen‘s second goal of the game gave the Predators a 5-3 lead in the third period, on Thursday night.
“I [have] a lot of confidence right now,” Parssinen said. “I get to play a lot. I play with really good teammates, good [linemates], so of course I have confidence now.”
That was just enough as the New York Islanders’ Jean-Gabriel Pageau hit for a power play goal late in the third to cut the advantage to 5-4, but the Preds held serve for the 5-4 victory.
Nashville improved to 8-8-1.
“He’s a power-first player,” Nashville coach John Hynes said of Parssinen. “I thought there were some times in the Minnesota game (on Tuesday) where he was playing a little bit more of a finesse game. I thought tonight he was back to being [powerful] and strong on the puck and being an offensive threat. … I thought it was a nice step in the right direction for him again tonight.”
Juuse Saros made 29 saves in the Predators win.
Trailing, 4-1, in the second period, New York’s Cal Clutterbuck made it 4-2 in the frame, and Kyle Palmieri inched them closer at 4-3 in the third period.
Filip Forsberg staked the Preds to a 1-0 lead at 1:03 in the first period.
“He’s making life easy for both me and [Mikael Grandlund],” Forsberg said of Parssinen. “He skates really well. He’s strong on the puck.”
New York tied it on a strike from Adam Pelech 1:39 later for the 1-1 score.
The Isles dropped to 11-7-0.
“The starts aren’t good enough,” New York captain Anders Lee said. “Tonight was indicative of that.”
Nashville then added two more goals from Colton Sissons and Nino Niederreiter for a 3-1 lead.
”The key is finding ways to win, and we made enough plays tonight to give ourselves a chance to win,” Hynes said. ”I think that’s good on the guys for finding a way.”
The Isles’ Cal Clutterbuck scored in the second period to make it 4-2.
“Sometimes that hole, you can’t afford any other mistakes,” Lee said. “When they were able to get that extra [goal] a couple times, it [made] it a little bit further than we had to work back to.”
Ilya Sorokin made 26 saves in the Isles loss.
“I thought we answered back pretty well,” New York defenseman Noah Dobson said. “We didn’t have the jump early on, but I thought we did a good job finding it to try and get back in the game. We did a good job of that, but we have to have a little better jump from the start.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.