In Newark, the Nashville Predators took a 2-0 lead in the first period (you know where this is going) over the New Jersey Devils on Thursday night, and then surrendered three goals in the middle frame, before rallying to tie and win in extra time, 4-3.
Ryan Johansen‘s second strike of the game came with 33 seconds gone in the extra session for the win.
“That was huge for us,” Johansen said. “We could have easily walked out with no points but we made a couple of big plays and had a great result.”
The Preds needed a late goal from Mikael Granlund to tie the game. THe strike came with just over eight seconds left on the regulation clock.
“We had a really big penalty kill at the end, then made a really good play to get our shot,” Granlund said. “I think they were playing it safe (using two defensemen on the power play), but we’ve done that before. That was a good job by us getting two points and a good way to start this back-to-back.”
Juuse Saros made 25 saves in the win.
Nashville improved to 11-9-2.
“We found a way to get it done,” Nashville coach John Hynes said. “To be a top team you have to beat top teams, and we did that tonight. That was a hard-fought game. We had a big kill at the end and the guys at 6-on-5 got it done.”
Johansen and Colton Sissons scored in the first period to take the 2-0 lead.
New Jersey replied in the middle frame with goals from Kevin Bahl, Jesper Bratt (power play), and Alexander Holtz.
“We had the lead in the end and we lost it, so we know we have to be better and know this group is better than what we what we did tonight,” Devils forward Tomas Tatar said. “I don’t think it’s too troubling. We just have to rebound, refocus and come back stronger.”
New Jersey dropped to 19-4-1.
“Even though we put an extra defenseman up there, the mindset is go for the goal on the late power play,” New Jersey coach Lindy Ruff said. “I didn’t like what we did. Nobody did. We wanted to attack, we wanted to try to score, but at the same time we were going to be smart and have two defensemen for both (power-play) units. The execution wasn’t what we wanted.”
Vitek Vanecek made 20 saves in the loss.
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