It gets no better than Detroit vs Nashville. Win or lose you know this will be an exciting game with lots of great hockey action. Tonight’s game did not disappoint as the Preds took an early 3-0 lead and rode it out to a 4-2 final victory.
With the two points the Preds are now up to 66 total points. This will place them in the 7th playoff spot. They are still tied with Calgary in terms of points, but the Flames have one game in hand so they have secured the 6th seed for now.
Felder’s Fantastic Five:
1. Hits and Takeaways = Preds W over Wings – In my pregame blog I said the Preds would have to play physical to win. They did just that and registered 23 hits tonight with Shea Weber leading the team with a personal 4 hits. The other stat that may go overlooked is the 17 takeaways the Preds earned. When you play a puck possession team as good as Detroit this stat is very significant and is definitely one of the reasons why the guys won.
2. Not to toot my own horn but I’d like to point out the other ways the guys followed my 5 keys in the pregame blog. I said we would need 25 shots, we had 23. I said we would need scoring from more than just the RAD line, Erat and Peverley did their part on the 2nd Pred goal. I knew we would need 60 minutes of energy, and we did that fairly well, but there was about 8 to 10 minutes in the 2nd that could have been better. Finally, I said we would need consistent goaltending and Mace provided just that. Nice to see all those thoughts play out on the ice and the guys have success.
3. Rudy – Just a huge night for the kid. I was really hoping he would get his 1st career hat trick, but it wasn’t in the cards tonight. We all know it will come soon enough though. Rads finished the night with 2 goals, a +3 rating, and had 3 shots on goal.
4. Martin Erat – Marty made his presence felt immediately. This was his 1st game back since leaving the Tampa Bay game early with back spasms. Even in limited TOI (13:12 total) Erat had 1 goal, 1 assist, a +2 rating, 1 shot on goal, 3 hits, and 1 blocked shot.
5. Dan Hamhuis – That behind the back no-look pass off the boards that inexplicably found Erat with Peverley is a thing of wonder. I’ll have quotes from Hammer in the update tomorrow about that play. I know some were happy to see him sit last game (he had the flu) but I wasn’t one of them and tonight proved once again his value. Hammer finished the night with 1 key assist, a +2 rating, 3 hits, 2 takeaways, and 2 blocked shots.
Other Notes:
• I really hope something happens at the deadline to make room for Ville Koistinen. His play has not been poor and honestly he deserves better. It is as simple as a numbers game and I understand that, but honestly we need him on the PP if it will ever be fixed.
• Osgood has 5 straight wins vs Nashville. You already knew that you’d have to solve that puzzle though didn’t you?
• OH RADU YOU DO THAT THING THAT YOU DO! Rudy setting the place off with an early goal. Nice play by J.P. Dumont coming off the boards to center to Arnott. Arnott lets one off and the rebound is tallied on by Alexander Radulov for his 22nd goal of the season. To top it off we were treated to a classic Rudy celebration, stick twirl while sheathing his sword.
• And then the Legwand line gets it done. Erat and Peverley get a great no look feed from Dan Hamhuis that finds Erat, he passes to Pevs, Pevs back to Erat for the easy tally. 2-0 Preds early and the crowd is FEELING it!
• Another 2 goal lead now for the Preds. They have been sitting back on these lately so here is hoping they’ve learned from the past few games.
• The goals keep coming as Zids sets up Dumont after taking the puck over the blue line. This set up a great pass to J.P. Dumont who easily beat a sliding Osgood on his right side. J.P. trying to keep pace with Rudy as this was Dumont’s 21st goal.
• This goal chased Osgood out of the net. Osgoods night, 3 goals against on 4 shots. Puzzle solved!
• Jimmy Howard will be coming into net. He was called up just today from Grand Rapids and one would have to think that the Preds come after him hard. Hopefully this bad boy will get out of hand…
• Nichol appears to get tripped up getting a penalty call against Lidstrom. I’ll be completely unbiased here and say I was surprised Scooter didn’t get called for diving. That one was close and if Detroit fans were upset by it I could understand why.
• Very interesting to note that before tonight’s game the Preds PK was ranked 4th in the NHL and the Detroit PP was ranked 4th also.
• Mason looking very sharp thus far and really showcasing his abilities during Detroit’s 1st PP.
• Key to the period? I’d have to say 13 hits. That’s what I was talking about in the pregame blog and thus far, they have followed Felder’s recipe with great success.
• Got a chance to briefly meet im4preds during this intermission. As always it is nice to put a face with a name. I’m always outside 311 at intermission folks so feel free to come say hey.
• Here comes the period of horror. Lets hope the Preds can’t put this 2nd period troubles to bed.
• 16:23 to go in the 2nd period and J.P. lets off a slapper that must have worried Howard. Jimmy got lucky that J.P.’s shot was high.
• Arnott gets called for interference. This call was very weak in the fact that the Red Wing’s player ran into Arny at the blueline, and then Jason got called for a penalty. That one was making up for Lidstrom I assume.
• On the ensuing PP Detroit tallies off a wicked wrister from Johan Franzen. He perfectly placed this bullet just under Mace’s glove and just above his leg pad. Just a clean shot from the slot and he had all the time and space he needed.
• 13:35 to go and Mason makes two key saves to prevent Detroit from gaining more ground. 1st a pad save then a follow up save in traffic on his rebound given up.
• 11:50 to go and Smithers is put down behind the net by Dallas Drake. Later on the same shift Mikael Samuelsson tries the same thing but this time both players go down. Smithers got up first and clearly talked a little smack back at Samuelsson who was slow to get up from the collision.
• Thus far Howard has played pretty solid. He hasn’t seen many shots though to tell the truth. Midway through the game and the Preds have a total of 11 shots on goal.
• 8:16 to go in the 2nd and Leggy upends a Red Wing without a call. This prompts Draper to hit DeVries against the Red Wing bench. Devo takes exception and to curtail further events the refs call roughing on both.
• On the ensuing 4v4 Zetterberg interferes with Arnott who was trying to cross the blueline. Now we have ourselves a 4v3 PP situation for 1:46. There were a couple of missed chances on this PP and once again the futility of the power play is shown.
• Mixed up line change sets up Rudy. Erat made a very nice pass at the blueline to spring Radulov. Rudy goes in untouched and beats Howard easily with a backhander 5 hole. The building was on its feet as Radulov skated towards Howard and after the tally Radu was showing us all how much he just loves hockey!
• Bonk gets called for holding the stick. That one had him steaming a bit. During the Det PP Nichol clearly hooks a Red Wing and thus creates a 43 second 5v3. Just a stupid penalty to take honestly. Detroit took its timeout before the 2 man advantage.
• As expected, the Red Wings tally as Datsyuk takes a missed shot by Lidstrom that bounces off the boards and right to the side of Mason. Mace had no chance as this was just an unlucky bounce and you would have to expect Datsyuk to not miss their. Now the lead is trimmed to 4-2 Preds.
• 42 seconds left in the 2nd period and as Nichol springs out the box he gets a breakaway chance on Howard. Give credit to Howard who stopped a wrister high glove side.
• End of the 2nd and the Preds survive. Only 6 shots for Nashville that period as opposed to Detroit’s 16. They weren’t terrible in the 2nd, but other than Rudy’s breakaway there weren’t many scoring opportunities.
• The key to 3rd period will be staying out of the freaking box. Both Detroit goals have come on the man advantage.
• Zanon gets called for hooking just 2:35 into the 3rd. This call really drew the ire of the fans with good reason. Just like Nichol probably sold his penalty at the beginning of the game, the Red Wing sold this one as well.
• Preds WIN 4-2. I have to give credit to Jimmy Howard though since he played very well in relief of Osgood. Osgood just didn’t have a great night and his D wasn’t there for the 1st ten minutes of the game. Fortunately for Pred fans that is all the guys needed to put things away.
My Three Stars:
1. Alexander Radulov
2. J.P. Dumont
3. Martin Erat
Goalie Grade:
A – The starting goaltender tonight was Chris Mason. It is very hard to fault a goalie for giving up PP goals. So in my opinion I thought Mace played a very, very solid game. He came up with the 2 to 3 big saves required each game to win and stopped a ton of shots, 40 of 42 to be exact.
Ref Review:
D+ – The crew tonight was Brad Meier, Tim Peel, Lonnie Cameron, and Shane Heyer. You can go through the Other Notes section to read on the missed calls, embellishments, and overall inconsistency from the crew. They did get a handle on things before it turned ugly so I can give them credit for not letting things happen after the whistle.
Quotes:
As always keep in mind that all my quotes come directly from questions that I ask. I do not pull them from other reporter’s questions so if you hear or see them elsewhere you know where they came from.
"It's huge. We know we can skate and it's a matter if we do it every night. We have to beat Detroit to be successful. We did that, we backchecked hard, we got on their skill guys, and we just took away their space." - Chris Mason on the 5v5 domination on offense for the Preds.
"We have had crunch time here for the last 10 or 15 games, since the New Year. You look at the standing every single day and it's one or two points so you have to keep winning." - Chris Mason
"Well that's where I wanted it to go but I didn't know they were that open. I was trying to keep it in and I knew that had a lot of guys on the wall so I just was throwing back towards the net and I was surprised to see how open they were." - Dan Hamhuis on his no-look pass that set up the Preds 2nd goal.
"We have to take some positives out of this game but we have to make sure we don't just sit and watch now. We beat the #1 team in the league and we are a really good team when we all play together. We have a few things we need to work on and get ready for Thursday." - J.P. Dumont on the confidence from beating Detroit 5 on 5.
"I'm really excited that they are staying here and I hope I'm going to play with them." - Alexander Radulov on the excitement of the RAD line possibly staying together for 3+ years.
"Well it was real key because you break that up, you break a little of their momentum. One area against puck possession teams that we have to be better at is faceoffs. They dominated in the faceoffs. But yeah creating those takeaway and turnovers was real key to our success tonight cause they don't give it away a whole lot." - Trotz on how key the 17 takeaways were.
"Marty was real good. I think the extra days he has had has helped him. His injury is one of those nagging injurires that takes a little steam out of you. He looked really good tonight. I played him probably a little less than I normal do." - Trotz on Erat's return
Final Thoughts: Enjoy this win Pred fans, it always feels best when it is against your most hated rival. The Predators next game will be a Valentines Day Special vs the Chicago Blackhawks. I personally have such a great girlfriend that she told me months ago that she is attending this game with me, and so, I’ll be in 310 with my woman celebrating this holiday for candy companies. Game time is at 7 PM CST and there are special deals where you can get 2 tickets, food vouchers, and a picture for you and your sweetie for just 79 bucks. So if you don’t have plans for your date, why not catch a hockey game and enjoy the family friendly confines of the Sommet Center. Till then, take care.
Join the Discussion:
»