In Vancouver, the Canucks let a three-goal lead in the first period get away from them on Saturday night.
The Nashville Predators rallied for three goals over the second and third periods, and then won the game on skills, 4-3.
Jordan Gross hit for a double for the Predators to get them within 3-2.
“Really special. It’s something you’ve worked for for a long time and it felt great,” Gross said when asked if his goals meant more because of the comeback. “Didn’t have the best start personally and felt great to get one back for the team.”
Nino Niederreiter scored in the third period to knot the game at 3-3, and foce the extra session that solved nothing.
“We put ourselves in a big hole there and that’s one of the reasons why we have him on the team,” Nashville coach John Hynes said of Gross. “He’s shown that he’s got the ability to be able to produce offense. He’s got good vision. He can move the puck and obviously, the power-play goal he got was pretty good. You can see his offensive instincts down around the net and then obviously, the goal from the blue line was a great shot.”
Juuse Saros made 42 saves in the Nashville win.
“As soon as we scored that first goal, I felt like we had a mental advantage on them,” Nashville’s Mattias Ekholm said. “They seemed to be on their heels a little bit. They were just flipping pucks out, and we kept coming at them and got another goal and after that, we pressured for a fourth, and it didn’t come until the shootout.”
The Predators improved to 5-6-1.
“We sat back instead of went after them, and then the next thing you know, they’ve got two goals (in the third period),” Vancouver coach Bruce Boudreau said. “I think sometimes it’s like you’re afraid to win, and we righted the ship after that, and they didn’t have a lot, but it was too little too late.”
Matt Duchene was credited with the deciding goal in the skills competition.
Vancouver took a 2-0 lead in the first period off goals from Ilya Mikheyev and J.T. Miller.
“We knew that just because the first period was in our favor pretty much the whole time that the game wasn’t over,” Miller said. “We played a good 40 minutes, set ourselves up, and obviously we’re tired of getting teams coming back on us. But it’s not all bad, and I think we’re a lot closer than people think.”
Andrei Kuzmenko scored off the power play to make it 3-0 for Vancouver.
“We weren’t very good in the first period,” Hynes said. “I thought Vancouver beat us all over the ice, and our speed, our competitiveness, our execution wasn’t at the level that it needed to be. We did enough tonight to be able to find a way to win, but I think we got better in us.”
Thatcher Demko made 27 saves in the Canucks loss.
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