Islanders 5, Lightning 3: Shane Prince scored twice during a three-goal first period and John Tavares had a goal and an assist in the New York Islanders’ 5-3 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Wednesday night in Game 1 of their Eastern Conference semifinals series.
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Rinne made 36 saves for the wild-card Predators, who rallied from a 3-2 series deficit and ousted the Pacific Division champion Ducks with a workmanlike road victory.
This is what we waited for the entire series. Their power play’s really good.
“When you’re picked as highly as a team like Anaheim or Washington or whoever it might be, I think there’s a little bit more pressure there to be successful”, Nashville coach Peter Laviolette said.
The San Jose Sharks are set to face the Predators in the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Side note: had Filip Forsberg not been the elbow that took Josh Manson out of the rest of the series, I could have seen tipping my hat to him as well in this section, however I can’t respect when one player targets another maliciously.
After Wednesday night’s Game 7 between the Anaheim Ducks and Nashville Predators, the words of Yankee great Yogi Berra come to mind, “it’s deja vu all over again”. Only six players had even appeared in a seventh game with other teams, but they were already looking forward to their return to Nashville next week. Not only that, but he clearly prepared his players from the get go for everything the Ducks would throw at them, and that preparation is what helped propel this team to the second round. “I think our fans have been waiting for it, and we want to keep moving on”.
A Game 7 loss at home for the fourth season in a row – 2-1 to the Nashville Predators in the first round Wednesday – forebodes consequences potentially more severe than previous years.
Kesler ended Rinne’s quest for a shutout on a power play 1:45 into the third period. They had numerous late chances to tie it while largely dominating the final two periods, outshooting Nashville 28-10. No faith in this Ducks team to pull out a game when the times get tough.
The thing is, we’ve seen this story before. It’s hard to blame the Ducks for not being able to hold onto key assets like Bobby Ryan because this franchise simply does not have the funds to dish out a series of big contracts to UFA’s. Nevertheless, the core of the Anaheim Ducks (Corey Perry, Ryan Getzlaf, Ryan Kesler, Cam Fowler, Sami Vatanen) have all been together throughout the majority of this game seven losing streak, but that core his shifted significantly and often over the years.
Despite having home-ice in the series, the Ducks lost their third home game of the series; this time by a tally of 2-1. The Nashville Predators came along to provide the Sharks a gift.
Bruce Boudreau’s record in Game 7s is now 1-7.
This franchise’s miserable recent history in these situations sours even more when adding in Boudreau’s torturous Game 7 past.
“It’s going to be about us and what we’re prepared to do”, Pavelski said Thursday.
“We’ve got three extra guys”, Boudreau said. We’ve got to stay above, when we get in on the forecheck we can’t let their dmen beat us up the ice.
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Two of the NHL’s feel-good teams will go head-to-head and something has to give when the Predators and Sharks face-off in Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs – starting Friday. San Jose is loaded across the board and finally got everyone on the same page in a playoff series and they made amends for their melt down two seasons ago by sending the Kings packing in five games and making them look amateur. Jakob Silfverberg broke his stick on a three-on-two chance. The Islanders won their first series since 1993. The Predators scratched F Cody Bass for the first time in the series, using Colton Sissons and Craig Smith instead.
