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Stanley Cup Preview? Predators Drop Lightning in Overtime Thriller

By Angelo Resciniti

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If Tuesday night’s nail-biter in Nashville is any sort of barometer, a Stanley Cup finals showdown between the Tampa Bay Lightning and the hometown Nashville Predators promises to be nothing less than a barn-burner.

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The game had it all.

Exciting to watch and no doubt exhilarating to play in, the No. 1 team in the East and the No. 1 team in the West battled back and forth through momentum changes galore before the Preds got the winning goal with just 32.4 seconds left in overtime to take a 3-2 victory over the game and gutsy Bolts inside a raucous Bridgestone Arena in the Music City.

Nashville improved its NHL-best record to 36-12-6 and 78 points with the heart-stopping win. Tampa Bay earned a point for pushing the game into OT, improving to a 34-16-6 mark. With 74 points the Bolts maintained a one-point lead in the East over the Montreal Canadiens, who won Tuesday night to jump over Detroit and move into second place with 73 points.

And things do not get any easier for the good guys.

The Lightning, who played the NHL’s top two teams within a three-day span, whipping Anaheim 5-3 on Sunday before Tuesday’s overtime thriller in Nashville, return home to face the St. Louis Blues — only tied with the Bolts as the third-best team in the league — on Thursday at the Amalie Arena. The Blues beat the Lightning 2-1 in overtime on February 3 in a game that unfolded very much like the Nashville match, including the disappointing loss in OT.

That Tuesday’s game even made it into overtime is a tribute to the resilience of the Lightning squad and to the emergence of rookie goalkeeper Andrei Vasilevskiy as a bona fide NHL game-changer.

Vasilevskiy stole the game in the first period. He stopped a Nashville breakaway by Craig Smith just three minutes into the game. He made a save on a point-blank shot by Smith halfway through the period. His friend the post frustrated another Nashville scoring opportunity a few minutes later. And then, with just over five minutes left in the period, Vasilevskiy made a highlight-reel sliding toe save to rob Mike Ribeiro of a sure goal from close in. The Bolts actually outshot the Predators by 10-8 in that first period, but Nashville had by far the more dangerous scoring attempts. Still, it ended at 0-0 thanks to Vasilevskiy.

The cumulative wear from losing too many face-offs and establishing too little zone time started to catch up with the Lightning in the second period. Seth Jones snapped a wicked wrist shot that found room over Vasilevskiy’s left shoulder to give the Preds a 1-0 lead. And just four minutes later Taylor Beck picked up a rebound off the post and popped it in for a 2-0 edge.

The Nashville lead appeared insurmountable. By the end of the second period the Bolts had attempted 41 shots. The Predators blocked 14 of them. Nine missed the night. Only 18 got through to the best goaltender in the league, and Pekka Rinne had handled all of them. The Bolts were clearly frustrated and fuming.

And so the Bolts came hard out of the gate in the third period, spending the first minute-plus in the Nashville zone. Valtteri Filppula slashed a backhand shot that caromed off a post. Linemate Brett Connolly, who had already savored his first fight of the season in the second period, picked up the rebound and pushed it past Rinne to cut Nashville’s lead to 2-1.

The Lightning skaters continued to buzz the net. Six minutes later the score was tied. The Triplets attacked the Nashville goal, Tyler Johnson to Ondrej Palat and then a top shelf slap shot from Nikita Kucherov to make it 2-2. The goal was the 21st of the season for the surprisingly prolific winger and extended his scoring streak to four games.

The Bolts dominated the rest of the third period but could not get another puck past Rinne, who leads the NHL’s trapper-keepers with 30 victories and a 2.02 goals against average.

Overtime was winding down toward a shoot-out when the Predators suddenly and severally got behind the Lightning defense and close in on Vasilevskiy. He managed to stop Seth Jones but seconds later — and with only 32.4 ticks left on the clock — James Neal slid the game-winner under the pads and the Preds started their celebration.

The Bolts outshot (32-29) and outhit (22-16) the best team in the league. But the Predators won a commanding ratio of faceoffs (39-30) and had the better of the goaltending with Rinne stopping 94% of the shots he faced compared to 90% for the Lightning rookie, who made the evening’s more spectacular saves.

And while the playoffs are still 30 games and a couple of months away, Lightning coach Jon Cooper treated this game with respect, shifting his lines several times and shortening his bench to three lines for much of the match. Cooper continued to make adjustments to his defense, bolstered by the return of Jason Garrison but still missing stalwarts Radko Gudas and Matt Carle.

He often paired Anton Stralman and Victor Hedman, his top two defensemen, who played 23 and 26 effective minutes, respectively. Neither was on the ice for any of Nashville’s goals.

The Predators come to Tampa on March 26, just eight games before the end of the regular season, for the second meeting of the year.

If a third meeting is in the cards, it won’t happen until the Stanley Cup finals.

And if that does happen, it promises to be something special.

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