Preds Begin Preseason Back-to-Back Set With Loss to Tampa Bay

Ozzy Wiesblatt scored the lone Nashville goal as the Predators fell to the Tampa Bay Lightning by a 4-1 final on Saturday night from Benchmark International Arena. The result sees the Preds move to 2-2-0 in the preseason with two more exhibition games to go.

The Preds certainly had their chances against the Lightning, and the visitors outshot the home team by a 29-17 margin, but Tampa Bay scored a pair of power-play goals to help lead them to victory.

“We had some opportunities…especially in the second and third period, kind of carried the play for the most part,” Preds Head Coach Andrew Brunette said. “Had trouble scoring on the power play, had our opportunities, but a lot of positives. I thought a lot of guys played pretty well. These are hard games. You get off the plane, you jump into the first period, and it's tough to get going. So, I thought we battled, we competed, gave ourselves some looks at the end, and weren't able to score.”

“It was fast,” Preds defenseman Tanner Molendyk said. “I mean, a lot of special teams. We did what we could. I felt like we got looks, but in the end we didn't get what we wanted.”

The Lightning had a 1-0 lead after 20 minutes of play, and they went up by two with a power-play goal in the middle period, but the Preds then had a push, and Wiesblatt tipped in a Fedor Svechkov shot into the twine in his first preseason game of 2025 to get Nashville on the board.

Nashville continued to carry the play for portions of the game, but the teams went back and forth to the penalty box, and after the Preds were unable to convert on their power-play opportunities, the Lightning took a two-goal lead late on the man advantage before adding an empty-netter.

“It was kind of a funny game with all the penalties, for both teams really,” Brunette said. “We probably took a few too many offensive zone penalties where we weren't moving our feet taking penalties. But it was a tough game to really gauge. I really liked our second period. I thought the [Erik] Haula line got us going there for about five or six minutes where we were kind of taking over the game a little bit, and couldn't find that second one.”

From here, the Preds will prepare to face the Hurricanes in North Carolina tomorrow night with a chance for another group of players to show what they’re capable of with just two preseason games to go on the schedule.

“These back-to-backs, we’ll see a lot of our younger kids tomorrow night, and it'll be a good opportunity for them to put a great showing on and play hard,” Brunette said. “So, we're looking forward to having some good energy tomorrow.”

Notes:

Wiesblatt, as well as forward Zach L’Heureux and defenseman Tanner Molendyk all made their preseason debuts for the Predators on Saturday night.

Preds goaltender Juuse Saros played the first two periods of Saturday’s game before Matt Murray took over in the final frame.

Nashville will close out their weekend back-to-back on Sunday when they face the Hurricanes in Raleigh at 6 p.m. CT for their penultimate game of the preseason.