Preds Score Three in Third but Fall to Hurricanes

Michael Bunting, Matthew Wood and Filip Forsberg all tallied in the third period, but the Nashville Predators fell to the Carolina Hurricanes by a 6-3 final on Saturday night at Lenovo Center.

Forsberg’s goal was his 700th NHL point, and the Preds pushed back in the final frame, but they also took seven minor penalties in the first two periods against the Hurricanes and found themselves in a five-goal hole.

“A slow start, obviously a bad penalty early by me, they got a power-play goal, and then the whole first period [felt like a] power play for them,” Forsberg said. “The penalty killers did as much as they could. A 5-on-3 is obviously tough. I think the penalties is what started this, and then we never really got a fair chance after that to come back in the game. And that's obviously on me with that bad penalty to start [and snowballing] from there.”

“Too many penalties,” Preds Head Coach Andrew Brunette said. “First period was the focus coming in. We kind of got away with it the other night in Florida. Tonight, we didn't start off OK and then we got in penalty trouble, and we're on our heels for basically the rest of the game. It's a hard place to play, and you're giving them freebies, free momentum, and they're playing 5-on-4 for eight minutes in the first period, it's tough to overcome.”

Nashville surrendered three goals in the opening frame - including two on the power play - and Carolina added another in the second stanza for a 4-0 lead through 40 minutes.

In the final period, Bunting scored on the power play, Wood potted an impressive, between-the-legs marker all alone in front and Forsberg tapped in a Nick Blankenburg feed, but the comeback came up short as Carolina also added two more of their own.

“There’s too much pride and character in this room to quit, but at the same time, we're down five. It's obviously going to take something extremely special to come back,” Forsberg said. “I thought we played well enough, and it's easy, probably, for them to take their foot off the gas a little bit too. But there's certainly a couple things we can take from that period with us.”

The Preds will try to do just that as they head back home, but they know they’ve got to stay out of the box, especially with a top Colorado power play coming to town on Tuesday.

“I think that's kind of the message, just especially coming in with [the Avalanche], with one of the best power plays in the League as well,” Forsberg said. “So, we’ve got to look ourselves in the mirror.”

“Well, we’ve got to refocus,” Brunette said. “Obviously, we'll address some of the things that we're doing wrong here, especially the penalty trouble. It's one of those things where you kind of got to straighten out as it rears its ugly head back here again. We’ve got to regroup and got to help [Juuse Saros] out. I thought “Juice’ was outstanding. We were really not very good in front of him.”

Notes:

On Friday, the Preds placed forward Ozzy Wiesblatt (upper body, 8-10 weeks) and defenseman Justin Barron (upper body, week-to-week) on Injured Reserve. Tyson Jost took Wiesblatt’s spot in the lineup on Saturday. Defenseman Nick Perbix (upper body, day-to-day) was scratched for Nashville.

With their two-game trip complete, the Predators will return home to host Colorado on Tuesday (8:30 p.m. CT) and St. Louis on Thursday (7 p.m. CT) at Bridgestone Arena.