In Nashville, the Predators were 15 seconds from away a 2-1 win over the visiting Dallas Stars on Saturday.
The Stars needed only 11 of those seconds.
Craig Smith hit for the tying goal at 19″45 to make it 2-2.
“I think first and foremost, we’ve got to get the puck in, and we’ve got to keep it in and try to create a little bit of pressure in some areas,” Smith said. “We’ve just got to break down. It was kind of a scramble. Stayed hungry on it, we got a nice bounce out front and I was able to get a good stick on it.”
Dallas’ Jani Hakanpää then scored with four seconds left for a 3-2 win.
“We didn’t have our best tonight for the first 40 minutes, but we found a way to get it done,” Dallas’ Matt Duchene said. “I thought in the third period we were the better team. We kind of turned the game. [Saros] is such a good goalie, you need some decent bounces to get it. Luckily we got one there to tie it up, and then [Hakanpaa] with a [slap shot].”
Scott Wedgewood made 19 saves in the win.
The Stars improved to 20-8-4.
“We talked at the end of the second period and we felt that there were still points to be had here tonight if we could play a good 20 minutes,” Stars coach Peter DeBoer said. “Give [the Predators] credit; they defended hard. They blocked a ton of shots. Their goalie was great. We had some frustration creeping in the second period. We kind of reset and came out in the third and gave ourselves a chance.”
Nashville dropped to 19-15-0.
“I thought we had too many passengers tonight for whatever reason, which is a little bit disappointing,” Predators coach Andrew Brunette said. “The more you talk about it, sometimes I wonder the less they listen. So, that was disappointing.”
After a scoreless first period, the Predators struck twice in the middle frame.
Michael McCarron staked the Preds to a 1-0 lead with 23 seconds gone in the period.
Colton Sissons hit off the power play at 6:33Â of the second for a 2-0 lead that Nashville held into the third period. on a wrist shot from the slot.
“We definitely wanted to play more in the [offensive] zone,” Sissons said. “It’s kind of easy for teams that are down and really pushing to play a little bit riskier and really aggressive. They kind of took it to us that way a little bit. There’s definitely some lessons to learn. We’ve been in a lot of tight games on the other side of things. We’ll take our medicine here and move on.”
Dallas’ Evgenii Dadonov scored at 8:22 of the third to trim the deficit to 2-1, before the late game heroics.
Juuse Saros made 31 saves in the loss.
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