In Raleigh, Juuse Saros set a Nashville Predators milestone on Thursday night when he made 64 saves in a 5-3 win over the Hurricanes.
“Some nights you need to pull puck luck there. It was all different [shots],” Saros said. “That was kind of the theme of the game, and they’re that kind of a team too, so I had to guess it was not going to slow down (in the third period).”
With the scored tied 3-3, at the start of the third period, Mark Jankowski scored the tie-breaker to the send the Preds to the win.
“We’re a resilient group,” Jankowski said. “Any time we get down like that, we know what we’re capable of. We don’t panic, we just bounce back. ‘Juice’ was unbelievable. He’s an All-Star for a reason. That was an unbelievable game by him.”
Nashville improved to 17-14-6.
“Juice played really well,” Nashville coach John Hynes said. “They had a lot of pressure on him, and he made multiple big saves. He’s one of the stars of our team and he played like that tonight.”
Carolina dropped their second straight after an 11-game win streak, their record fell to 25-8-6.
“We played a good game. I’m not going to put any negative on this,” Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “You put up [67] shots, you’ve got to win the game. What you’ve got to do is give credit where credit is due. [Saros] played as good a game in the net as you’re ever going to see. That’s the story.”
The two teams traded goals through the first 40 minutes with Carolina’s Paul Stastny and the Preeds’ Filip Forsberg scoring for a 1-1 tie.
The game went to a 2-2 tie on goals from Carolina’s Brady Skjei and Nashville’s Mattias Ekholm
“In the first 40 minutes, I thought there was plays to be made. I thought we did some of them,” Ekholm said. “But we had a goaltender that stood on his head and kept us in there, and at the end we land the final punch.
“This is a hard building to come out of with points. We’ve seen what they’ve done as of late, so we’re really happy with the points.”
Jordan Staal put the Canes up, 3-2, before the Preds’ Cody Glass tied it, 3-3.
The Canes lost it in the third when the Predators finally made a move for the lead. It was the second straight game where the Canes made the opposition chase them for 40 minutes, only to lose in the third period.
“We had the puck most of the game,” Staal said. “We created a lot of offense obviously, but we always got to play some tight defense if you want to win in this league.”
Colton Sissons added a late empty-net goa for the 5-3 final.
Pyotr Kochetkov made 20 saves in the loss.
You must be logged in to post a comment.