Erik Haula scored the lone Nashville goal as the Predators fell to the Utah Mammoth by a 4-1 final on Thursday night at Delta Center. The final road game of the regular season sees the Preds finish their five-game trip out West with seven of a possible 10 points.
The Predators certainly had their chances, and they outshot the Mammoth by a 30-27 count, but Utah capitalized on their opportunities to hand Nashville their first and only regulation loss in the month of April thus far.
“It's a tough one,” Preds Alternate Captain Ryan O’Reilly said. “I don't think we played our best tonight. We didn't play that playoff style that we've been having success with - taking care of the puck. Just a lot of fighting it to make plays, and we’ve just got to simplify… We kind of had a little momentum there, and didn't capitalize on it, which maybe could have sparked us. We didn’t build the game the way we needed to.”
“Thought that was a pretty good hockey game, and obviously if we pushed there a little bit in the second period we might still get rewarded, and then [their] third [goal early in the third period] hurt, so put us behind the eight ball a little bit,” Preds Head Coach Andrew Brunette said. “I thought the mindset wasn't quite right to start the game. Thought we turned too many pucks over, and kind of left pucks in bad areas that kind of fed their transition or their o-zone time. But, I thought a lot of good things tonight.”
The Mammoth had a 1-0 lead through 20 minutes of play, and they doubled that advantage through the second stanza despite the Preds outshooting Utah by a 19-15 count after two periods.
In the final frame, the Mammoth quickly took a 4-0 lead before Haula’s goal came on the power play to get the Preds on the board. But, on a night where they had to play without Captain Roman Josi due to an upper-body injury, the visitors were unable to add to their point totals.
“Obviously [Josi is] the soul of our team, and we all know how amazing a player he is, but we all have to collectively be better,” O’Reilly said. “When you have something like that, you’ve got to play much smarter, a tighter game than we did tonight. We made it a little too easy on them, and let their best players feel the puck too much. When you do that, they're going to make you pay.”
Now, with just three games remaining in the regular season, the Preds will head back to Tennessee for one last homestand beginning Saturday against Minnesota - and they know they’ll need to get back into the win column with the race continuing to tighten.
“We’ve got to get the next one,” O’Reilly said. “That's just the most important game of the year. This one, obviously we're upset about, but we don't have time to dwell on it. We have to make the adjustments, get back to us, and get ready to win another hockey game.”
“We had a heck of a road trip and are playing good hockey,” Brunette said. “Even tonight, they did enough to at least get something out of this game. Unfortunately, we didn't, and the mindset is we need to get something on Saturday.”
Notes:
Josi was a late scratch and is day-to-day with an upper-body injury. Jordan Oesterle took Josi’s spot in the lineup for his first NHL game of the season. Defenseman Nic Hague (upper-body, day-to-day) did not play, and Ozzy Wiesblatt was a healthy scratch.
With their final roadtrip of the season now complete, the Preds will return to Nashville for one last three-game homestand that begins on Saturday afternoon when the Minnesota Wild visit Bridgestone Arena.
