In Nashville, Filip Forsberg hit for a pair of goals and three points on Thursday night as 
the Predators won their sixth straight game, 5-2, over the visiting Colorado Avalanche.
Juuse Saros made 23 saves in the Preds win.
The loss snapped a five-game winning streak for the Avs.
“You see how hard those two guys work every day,” Forsberg said. “The way they contribute in so many ways to this team is incredible. They play hard minutes on the penalty kill. They finish every hit. They make life miserable for the other team. When I saw they were going to play together, I was excited just to try to get on that and try to feed off their energy and do my thing mixed in with theirs.”
Tanner Jeannot and Roman Josi struck for power-play goals in the Nashville win.
“It was weird,” Josi said. “We were just kind of sitting there [before the game]. It was kind of out of our control. But I don’t think any one of us ever went through something like that. It was definitely something we’ve never experienced.”
The Predators improved to 18-10-1.
Mikko Rantanen and Valeri Nichushkin were the Avs strikers.
“We came to play a hockey game here,” Rantanen said. “Obviously it was kind of questions in the air during the day because guys were dropping. But we had enough guys to play a hockey game and that’s what we did.”
Colorado dropped to 17-8-2.
Mattias Ekholm iced the win for the Preds with a late empty-net goal for the 5-2 final.
On what may soon become a nightly watch, both teams were hit by NHL COVID19 protocol. Nashville iced seven fewer players, and their entire coaching staff was sidelined. The Avs rostered five fewer players, including Darcy Kuemper.
“I just went to our players and said, ‘Hey what do you guys want to do?’,” Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar said. “Like I said, `We’re here to play a game.’ They were shorthanded, we were shorthanded. We’re not using COVID as an excuse. We’re here to win a hockey game. We had plenty of capable bodies in the lineup.”
Pavel Francouz made 30 saves in the Colorado loss.
Nashville called up their American League affiliate head coach, Karl Taylor, from the Milwaukee Admirals to handle the caching duties.
“This team has got the right energy, the right mentality,” Taylor said. “We just tried to come in and not get in the way, make sure we just rode the wave they’re on right now. Add a few things here and there, make sure they had direction, make sure we executed the game plan properly.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.