The Predators seem to like playing at around midnight central time. For the second time in these playoffs, the Nashville Predators have stunned their home standing opponent with a clutch last minute tying goal and an unlikely overtime hero as Nashville knotted their Western Conference Semi-Final series with the Vancouver Canucks at one game apiece with a 2-1 double overtime win.
Ryan Suter’s seeing-eye puck with 67 seconds remaining in the regulation was the hockey gods rewarding Nashville’s hard work for the previous 58:53. Nashville played an almost perfect road game. The announcers on Versus wondered at how the team fixed all the issues they displayed in their game one, well… fixed almost all of them, but we’ll worry about the power play at another time. Matt Halischuk’s beauty of a game winner will be remembered for a long time!
Oh yeah… and Pekka Rinne was simply amazing! He stopped scoring chance after scoring chance, puck after puck, frustrating the high-powered Canuck offense again and again, especially in overtime. I am sure that Kevin Bieksa and Maxin Lapierre are still mumbling to themselves after being robbed by Rinne.
Early morning church service had to be more lightly attended this morning (sorry, Father) but a happy Pred Nation looks forward to packing out Bridgestone Arena on Tuesday night in what is sure to be a raucous crowd. Game time is 8pm CDT.
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Random Notes
- The Predator forwards certainly listened to the critique of their game one performance. They came out firing last night.
- Any doubt about who the best defense pairing in the league is was erased last night. Suter and Weber were everywhere.
- Two of the Three Stars of the Day on NHL.com were Preds, Rinne and Suter took the two and three spots.
- For not having been in the semi’s before, Barry Trotz is pushing all the right buttons, he challenged the team with his pre-game quote… “What we do tonight is gonna say a lot about us.”
- It’s pretty funny reading the Canadian media’s denigration of the Predators game on the ice. The headlines could’ve been seen about game one as well, only switching the teams. Although I will give the Vancouver Sun full props for their “Split Happens” headline.
- It was even funnier to read Vancouver columnists jumping all over Roberto Luongo for his performance last night… Sheesh, if it wasn’t for him, that game doesn’t get to OT. Look… I still think that Luongo is overrated, but… he has been incredible for Vancouver’s last three playoff games and is playing up to his reputation.
- Very few tickets remain for games three and four.
- Wow, Boston is off to a great start, they simply dominated Philadelphia yesterday. The Flyers came out flat… and got flattened by a determined Bruins team.
- The Flyers goaltending carousel goes round again as the customary pulling of the starter occurred again. So now who’s the starter? Hockey fans are dying to know…
- Today’s Playoff Schedule – Detroit @ San Jose, Sharks lead 1-0, 2pm CDT (NBC, TSN) – Tampa Bay @ Washington, Lightning lead 1-0, 6:pm CDT (Versus, CBC)
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COMING UP ON THE NEXT SLAPSHOT RADIO…
We’ll be reviewing game three and reviewing game four on Wednesday show… Join us at 6pm CDT on SportsRadio 560 WNSR.
You can get check out our podcasts at
the SlapShot Radio podcast page.
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