Filip Forsberg recorded his 11th career hat trick, and the Nashville Predators defeated the St. Louis Blues by a 5-2 final on Monday night at Enterprise Center. The result gives the Preds their second victory over the Blues in the past week and wins in seven of their last 10 outings overall.
Michael Bunting and Reid Schaefer also tallied, and Juuse Saros made 20 saves in net for his 12th win of the campaign.
“I thought it was a pretty solid game,” Forsberg said. “We started off well, obviously got that goal early [and it] kind of gave us a little boost. And in the third period…I thought we sat back too much and defended. They're obviously a good team when we give them time and space like that. But overall, that was obviously a good enough effort to win, and ‘Juice’ played great in it.”
“I like the way we started,” Preds Head Coach Andrew Brunette said. “I like stretches of our game. It was one of those games that I thought...kind of lost momentum here and there, but we hung in there. In the third period, I thought we defended a little bit too much. But there was lots of good and we came ready to play. I thought our first period and probably halfway through the second were really good.”
Forsberg didn’t wait long for his first of the night - just 27 seconds into the contest - as he roofed a shot in tight past Joel Hofer for a 1-0 lead. The Blues tied the game in the opening period, but in the second stanza, Nashville took over.
Bunting gave the Preds the lead once more less than two minutes into the period, and Forsberg's second of the evening came on the power play as he sniped a shot into the twine.
“On the power play, we were working them for, it felt like almost two minutes, and finally, I think it was just time,” Forsberg smiled. “We kept shooting, the goalie kept making saves. But yeah, that one snuck in.”
Then, before the frame was out, Schaefer’s wrist shot from near the blue line found its way into the cage for the rookie’s third marker in his first nine NHL games.
St. Louis got one back on the man advantage in the third, but moments after the Blues pulled Hofer for an extra attacker, Forsberg potted his easiest of the night to send the Preds back to Tennessee with a fifth win in seven tries in the month of December.
“Fil doing Fil things tonight, and he got us off to a great start,” Brunette said. “Obvously we played them the other day. We knew they'd come out [fast]. We wanted to set the tone, and we wanted to dictate the pace of the game and he was a big reason why.”
The Preds will now have three games back in Nashville, starting Wednesday against Carolina, and Forsberg knows what he’ll want to see from his club.
“Obviously, [they’re] a team we just played recently coming into our building on Wednesday, with Carolina, and they’re a fast, tenacious team,” Forsberg said. “So, it'll be even more important [to be efficient] with the breakouts and trying to limit their odd-man rushes a little bit. Last game against them, we gave up a lot, and we can't do that against them. So, it’ll be another good one.”
“Just take a breath and get ready to go to work,” Brunette said. “Our goal here is to win the week, and we won today. [We’ve] got a huge one coming up against arguably one of the best teams in the League, and we’ve got to be ready to go.”
Notes:
Nashville’s lineup remained the same on Monday with Cole Smith and Justin Barron staying on Injured Reserve. There were no healthy scratches for the Preds.
Per NHL PR, Filip Forsberg scored 27 seconds in the contest marking Nashville’s fastest game-opening goal since Jan. 21, 2023 (Mikael Granlund at 0:19).
Forsberg scored within the opening 30 seconds of a game for the second time in his career (0:20 on Nov. 23, 2019). The only other Predators player with multiple such tallies is Patric Hornqvist (0:14 on Oct. 29, 2011 & 0:26 on Oct. 31, 2011).
Forsberg became the fifth Swedish player to record 50 multi-goal games, joining Mats Sundin (81), Tomas Sandstrom (66), Daniel Alfredsson (64) and Markus Naslund (52).
Forsberg tied Markus Naslund (11) for the second-most hat tricks by a Swedish player. Kent Nilsson tops the list with 14.
Roman Josi (0-2—2) passed Borje Salming (176) for the fifth-most multi-point games by a defenseman born outside of North America in NHL history. The list is topped by Nicklas Lidstrom (264), Erik Karlsson (214), Victor Hedman (188) and Sergei Gonchar (178).
With their two-game trip now complete, the Preds will begin a three-game homestand on Wednesday against Carolina before hosting Toronto and the New York Rangers this weekend.
