Twenty years to the day after the Nashville Predators won the first game in franchise history, they won another one;this time against the coach that was behind the bench for the first one: Barry Trotz.
Nashville jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first period on goals from Calle Jarnkrok, Filip Forsberg and Viktor Arvidsson – all within four and a half minutes of each other — en route to a 5-2 win Saturday night at Bridgestone Arena.
“It was a good start,” Preds coach Peter Laviolette said. “You could tell that our guys were skating well, that they were on point, that they played a simple north game and they were delivering pucks to the net, then anything is possible from there.
“I think that they (Islanders) were a little bit flat and that had to do with the way the (first) period played out. They definitely picked up their game in the second period. We tried to get a little bit too cute and that was the result of the second period, but it was the third-period response that I liked.”
“We did a lot of good things,” center Ryan Johansen added. “It’s tough to keep that going, especially against the teams in this league, where everyone’s a good team. We had to clean up a little in the second, but I thought we had a good response in the third to shut it down.”
Holding “the most dangerous lead in hockey,” the Predators admittedly let off the gas in the second period, allowing the Islanders to climb back in it with goals from Brock Nelson and Andrew Ladd, both scoring their firsts of the season.
“We played a really good first period and I think we caught them a little bit,” Laviolette said. “Sometimes when that happens, the opposition wakes up and you could go a little bit flat. We started to do the wrong things with the puck in the second period. We turned it over way too much. We stopped shooting the puck, and when that happens, you’re going to go back and play defense and then anything could happen from there. So, we ended up catching a couple goals.
“The response after the second period was very good. We played a much tighter game. A better brand of hockey that can find us success and scored a big goal to give us that two-goal cushion back.”
In the third period, the Preds finally got the proverbial monkey off their backs when Kyle Turris buried a much-needed goal on the power play. With a minute remaining, and the Islanders’ net empty, Forsberg drove the nail in the coffin, burying a length-of-the-ice shot into the empty net for his second of the game and sealing the 5-2 win.
“They (Islanders) were doing good things; the made a couple good plays,” Johansen said. “As a group, we had to go out there and get the momentum back. It was a huge goal for Turris on the power play, to get us that cushion again. It was a great time for the power play to step up.”
“The second period was obviously a let-down, we kind of gave in, but the third period was solid,” Forsberg added. Forsberg, Johansen and Arvidsson each had multi-point nights, while Juuse Saros saved 20 of the 22 shots he faced.
“We just wanted to get back to the things we were doing in the first period; manage the puck a little better and play good defense, that’s what we were able to do,” Johansen said. “When we needed Juuse, he was there to make some big saves. It was a good team effort in the third.”
