Rinne, Preds Shut Out Jets

Pekka Rinne stopped all 29 shots he faced, and the Nashville Predators defeated the Winnipeg Jets by a 3-0 final on Thursday night at Bridgestone Arena.
The evening's meeting was the first between the two clubs since their Round Two postseason series last spring, and while a shutout victory would have been satisfactory against any opponent, doing so against the Jets in their own building brought a little something extra to the evening.
"We just lost against them in the playoffs, and you could sense that," Rinne said of playing the Jets. "There was a lot of emotion on the ice. I thought that the first period was the fastest hockey so far this season… and in the third period, we played really smart."

"Playing a game like that, I thought it was a really fast game right from the beginning," Preds Captain Roman Josi said. "They're a great team over there, and every time we play them it's a good matchup. It feels good to get that win."
After a scoreless first, Ryan Hartman picked off a pass in his own end and took the puck the distance, eventually beating Connor Hellebuyck over the pad with a backhand for the game's first tally.

Then, the animosity came. The tension continued to build in the middle frame, and after a hit along the boards, everyone grabbed a partner. Colton Sissons and Mattias Ekholm paired off with Nikolaj Ehlers and Blake Wheeler, respectively, with each player receiving five for fighting.
And the spectators enjoyed the show.
"[Ekholm's] first fight; I was making fun of him the last six years for not getting a fight," Josi joked. "It definitely gave us a lot of momentum."
Something certainly carried over, and after the Preds killed their first penalty of the night to start the third, Nashville padded their lead by two as Josi blasted a shot home at 7:58 of the final frame. Ryan Johansen got in on the act before the night was over with a beautiful move in tight on his own for Nashville's third, the perfect exclamation point on the evening.

"It was the step we wanted to take," Johansen said of the win. "We weren't happy with our home opener, so it was a good bounce back for our group and beating a team we're most likely going to have to go through in the playoffs. We'll gain some confidence from there."
If there was a negative on the night, it was Nashville's mark of 0-for-9 on the power play. As Predators Head Coach Peter Laviolette has said before, there are certain things that don't always go as planned - and the power play happens to fall into that category at the moment.

"You have to work at it and you give it extra attention, but we have a tremendous amount of confidence in the guys out on the ice," Laviolette said. "I don't see this as a long-term problem. We have to work our way through it."
Nevertheless, the Preds will take the win, especially against a group that has become arguably their top rival.
"They're a really fast, highly skilled team, and I feel like we're the same," defenseman Ryan Ellis, who skated in his 400th career game, said. "It kind of felt like another playoff game out there, just the pace, the tempo. They played fast, we played fast, and I thought it was a really good hockey game."

Notes:
Rinne's shutout was the 52nd of his career, putting him in sole possession of 23rd place on the NHL's all-time shutout list, two shy of trying Bernie Parent and Ed Giacomin for 21st all-time.
Anthony Bitetto, Matt Irwin and Frederick Gaudreau were scratched for the Preds.
The second half of the Nashville homestand gets underway on Saturday night when the Preds host the New York Islanders before closing the stretch out against Minnesota on Monday.