The Nashville Predators return home tonight for Game Three of their Western Conference Round Two series with the San Jose Sharks.
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Pavelski also assisted on Logan Couture’s power play goal late in the second period, and Joe Thornton added an empty-net goal – the eventual victor – with 55.6 seconds to go as the Sharks held serve on home ice and head to Nashville for games 3 and 4 on Tuesday and Thursday, respectively.
Although the Sharks were the best road team, they had a 1-1-0 record in two games at Nashville.
A cat that made a mysterious appearance on the ice before Friday night’s San Jose Sharks playoff win against the Nashville Predators has become the latest feline to make a splash online.
The game lacked the usual playoff atmosphere in the Shark Tank at the start where there were rows of empty seats in the first non-sellout in the playoffs in franchise history.
“I’ve never seen that before”, Sharks coach Peter DeBoer said.
But late in the man advantage, Johansen slid a cross-ice pass to Fisher, who beat Jones with a wrist shot from the circle to the short side. But I’ve been dragged firmly on board with the Sharks, who are fun when they’re firing on all cylinders, able to tough out wins when they’re not, getting a ton of scoring from their top guys, and quietly receiving very good goaltending from Martin Jones.
“We’d rather be up 2-0, but it is what it is”, Josi added. “We weren’t playing as fast as we would have liked to have played”.
The Predators grabbed the lead in the second period, but even that didn’t seem to matter much.
Although the Sharks produced the second-most road wins in National Hockey League history this season, tying the 2014-15 New York Rangers and the 1998-99 New Jersey Devils, the veteran squad knows it can’t just show up at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville this week and expect to win, especially when the Predators are staring potential elimination in the eyes.
“You knew it was a game you were going to have to earn”, Pavelski said.
Since 2013, only five teams have come back to win a series after losing the first two on the road.
“As the game went on we got better, and we could feel them on their heels a little bit, ” captain Joe Pavelski said. If the Sharks can put a couple of goals past Rinne in the first period of game three, this series could pretty much be over. Before being ruled out of Game 4 against the Ducks two days later, Smith had appeared in 243 consecutive games, including the playoffs. We were opportunistic. We won the special teams battle, and that helped us win the game.
The Sharks pulled out the win with late-game heroics from the top line, a formula they know will be hard to replicate.
We won’t have to wait long to find out. “I think it was just shooting ourselves in the foot”, Predators center Ryan Johansen said.
From Nashville’s point of view, they’ll have to stay out of the penalty box, although they probably knew that already before Game 2.
Martin Jones locked down the Predators’ offense until the last six minutes of the game, when a Mattias Ekholm wrist-shot tied the score at 1-1.
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“They’re going to be excited to be back home and the series starts over, so we’ll have to better”, Burns said. They didn’t have that many chances. “They are so risky on the power play”.
