The first four games of the Nashville Predators’ postseason roughly matched their 2021 regular season, if you want to break that regular season into quarters.
First, some alarming signs. Second, hanging in there a bit more but ultimately not getting it done. Third and fourth, figuring it out and persevering and learning how to win. And that left it to Game 5 of a compelling first-round series Tuesday, back at Carolina’s PNC Arena, for the start of a best-of-three finish that still figured to end up in the hands of the better team. The better team, or so we have believed. The better team, by any credible measure of the entire season. And by quite a margin.
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Through 53 minutes of the latest meeting of these foes — whose disdain for each other is appropriate for this amount of playoff hockey, tacked on to eight regular-season meetings — it was not accurate to call Carolina the better team. The Hurricanes were the pressing team. They were the disjointed team. They were the team coughing the puck up while the Predators were calmly handling that Carolina pressure, the same pressure that had engulfed them so many times since January. The Preds (one giveaway in 40 minutes, four all night) had it figured out.
The Canes were the unlucky team, too, watching a Roman Josi loft hit off Yakov Trenin’s stick, and maybe a glove or shoulder somewhere in there as well, for the first goal of the game. Then, when the Canes thought they had tied the score at 2-2 in the second, that equalizer from Jaccob Slavin — the top defenseman, whose absence for most of this series has hurt Carolina — was waved off for goalie interference on Warren Foegele.
Nashville was better, leading, on the verge of taking command of this series and bringing it back to almost-full Bridgestone Arena for a Thursday clinching attempt. But in these moments in this sport, a tiny lapse or two can have giant implications. And that is why the Canes, not the Preds, are in position to end this thing. Their 3-2 overtime win to take a 3-2 series lead was extremely clutch or extremely not, depending on your perspective.
“It’s tough,” Josi said. “That’s a tough loss for us tonight. … There’s little bounces that can make a difference.”
Also, only fitting in this series and sport, there are calls that can make people very angry.
First, the non-controversial: With Juuse Saros so close to putting the finishing touches on another masterpiece, Carolina hero Martin Necas zoomed through Nashville’s neutral-zone trap, looking like he had the freshest legs on the ice. He beat Matt Duchene and wrapped around behind the net from Saros’ left to right. Matt Benning couldn’t arrive on time. Saros couldn’t get a good push off the post to get into position as he usually does in a flash. The score was tied, for real, with 7:05 left.
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The Canes and their fans were back in it from there, aggressively. And this actually ended up being a light night for both teams after double-overtime dust-ups and 71 extra minutes of hockey in Games 3 and 4 in Nashville. Carolina needed only 2:03 of one overtime to win this, on another clutch Carolina play and another Nashville mistake. Jordan Staal tried to tip a shot past Saros, Saros stopped it but then tried to bat the puck away rather than secure it. Staal batted it back, out of midair, and the puck trickled underneath Saros and into the net.
It was euphoria on one side. It was something very different from that on the other, though Nashville coach John Hynes kept it measured as usual afterward and said of the “tremendous opportunity” to come Thursday: “We know what we need to do. We’ve been through this before. That’s kind of why you go about your business the way you go about your business in the regular season.”
Hynes avoided, again, any criticism of the officiating, several hours after Preds GM David Poile said on 102.5 The Game in Nashville that he hopes Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour gets fined for ripping the penalty disparity earlier in the series. But the officials managed to make themselves a big part of the story again. Was Nashville unfairly given an extra minor on a scrum after a Luke Kunin-Andrei Svechnikov encounter, leading to Necas’ power-play equalizer in the first period? Maybe. More likely if you’re for the Preds.
Was the goalie interference call on Foegele a weak one? Maybe. More likely if you’re for the Canes. For the record and interestingly enough, former Preds goalie Chris Mason, on the Preds broadcast on Bally Sports, said he thought it was not interference. NBC analyst Pierre McGuire said he didn’t see how the goal could possibly stand after watching the first replay on the CNBC broadcast.
And then came overtime. Should Brady Skjei have been called for holding Mikael Granlund 56 seconds into the extra session? That’s a tough one at that point in the game. But he did hook Granlund’s arm. Should Alex Carrier have been called for interference 43 seconds after that, ending the Preds’ power play and creating the four-on-four situation that led to Staal’s winner? Carrier technically knocked Sebastian Aho over with no puck nearby. It also looked like Aho set Carrier up to try to draw the penalty and put the S-E-L-L in “embellishment.”
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If you’re for the Canes, you might just call that veteran savvy. If you’re for the Preds, you might want to go all Brind’Amour on some refs. You might also still be mad at Carrier, because the rookie has to be more aware in that moment.
And that’s really what this is about. There are going to be bad calls, bad bounces and good teams in the playoffs. The Preds almost had one in a real bind. You make the plays or you don’t. In Carolina, Necas’ saver and Staal’s winner represent order restored. In Nashville, a few slight mistakes represent opportunity lost. In any place where they care about the Stanley Cup, all will agree that you only get so many.
(Photo of Filip Forsberg: James Guillory / USA Today)
