It may have taken them a period-and-a-half to get going, but once they did, the Nashville Predators couldn’t be stopped in their 8-2 win over the San Jose Sharks on Tuesday night at Bridgestone Arena.
The win ties a Predators franchise record for the most consecutive games with a point (15), which was originally achieved by the Presidents’ Trophy winning team of 2017-18.
“The confidence is high,” Predators captain Roman Josi said. “We’re very grateful for this opportunity, to have this point streak. You can’t take it for granted. There’s a lot of work that we put into to get to this point and obviously we want to keep it going as long as we can. But I think we’re realizing as a group, what made us get here and the way we’ve played to get to this point, and so we’ve just got to keep doing it.”
With every game you take the good with the bad, so here’s what went right and what didn’t during the Predators rout of San Jose on Tuesday.
(+) Red-hot Roman Josi
No Predators skater is playing better right now than Josi is. His three-point performance on Tuesday was his 17th multi-point game and his sixth three-point game of the season. He also finished with a +4 rating. Among all NHL defensemen, Josi is first in goals (18) and shots (222), second in game-winning goals (4), third in points (70) and fifth in power-play points (27).
His goal came on a blast from the blue line as he was skating backward. His shot was pinpoint accurate and zipped past Sharks goalie Magnus Chrona, who never stood a chance.
Arguably Josi’s best play came on Michael McCarron’s first goal in the second period. He took the puck, skated around Sharks forward Luke Kunin near the right face-off circle, carried it to the net while freezing both Kunin and Marc-Edward Vlasic before nonchalantly dropping the puck off to Kiefer Sherwood, who fired it on goal where McCarron was waiting to tip it home.
(+) Good things happen when you attack the net
In less than six minutes, the Predators went from leading 4-2 to leading 8-2 in the third period. McCarron, Mark Jankowski, Filip Forsberg and Tommy Novak all found the back of the net, and all four happened because they were crashing the net.
Even McCarron’s first goal was a result of being directly in front of the net to gather Sherwood’s rebound and bury the puck. Jankowski’s goal was a right-place-at-the-right-time situation. Standing directly in front of Chrona, Jankowski maneuvered just the right way to bank a Tyson Barrie slapshot off his stick and into the net.
Forsberg’s came as he skated toward the crease after Gustav Nyquist whiffed on a shot from the left corner. He corralled the loose puck and snapped it over Chrona’s glove for the easy score.
Novak’s was one of the more impressive goals he’s scored this season and was the result of skating across the crease and catching the goaltender out of position. As he drew the defender with him, Novak casually shifted the puck between his skates and floated in a between-the-legs shot for an easy goal.
(-) Conceding physicality to San Jose
Not having Jeremy Lauzon in the lineup certainly made a difference, but the Predators, who have the third-most hits in the NHL, were out-muscled by the Sharks, who trailed them by a good 270 hits entering the game but out-hit them 28-17.
That surprising physicality kept the Predators off their game for the first period-and-a-half before settling in when Jason Zucker buried his second goal as a Predators around 9:37 of the period, which sparked a three-goal outburst in an eight-minute span to take control of the game back.
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