Hurricanes hang on, hand Predators first loss of season

NASHVILLE -- Andrei Svechnikov, Sebastian Aho and Vincent Trocheck each had a goal and an assist for the Carolina Hurricanes in a 4-2 win against the Nashville Predators at Bridgestone Arena on Monday.

James Reimer made 31 saves for the Hurricanes (2-1-0) in his first start of the season.
"It's good to feel the puck," Reimer said. "Like I always say, it's nice to get shots as long as they don't go in. It felt good to get into the game and make some saves and kind of get a feel for the quickness of the game and how things will go now that it's game time."
Viktor Arvidsson had a goal and an assist, and Pekka Rinne made 20 saves in his season debut for the Predators (2-1-0), who opened the season with two wins against the Columbus Blue Jackets. They'll play against the Hurricanes again at Bridgestone Arena on Tuesday (8 p.m. ET; ESPN+, FS-TN, FS-CR, NHL.TV).
"There was definitely chances," Nashville forward Filip Forsberg said. "It was a good game. I thought we deserved to win. I thought we played a lot better than we did [in a 5-2 win against Columbus on Saturday]. It's a funny game, hockey. You play OK and you win, and then you play great and you lose. We had chances. We have to bear down better on those, and we'll be looking to do that [against Carolina on Tuesday]."
Trocheck gave the Hurricanes a 2-1 lead at 3:46 of the third period on a wrist shot from the right face-off circle. He forced a turnover in the Predators zone and beat Rinne.
Aho gave the Hurricanes a 3-1 lead at 10:39 of the third on a 2-on-1 rush with Svechnikov. The Predators failed to convert on an odd-man rush, and Aho scored on the ensuing rush for his first goal.
"We played last year all year together," Svechnikov said. "I thought we got some chemistry from last year, and I know where [Aho] is going to be and he knows where I'm going to be, so that makes it easy on us. We feel each other very well."

Arvidsson scored on the power play to make it 3-2 at 13:26 of the third on a slap shot from the left circle.
Nino Niederreiter scored an empty-net goal to give the Hurricanes a 4-2 lead with 36 seconds remaining.
Svechnikov gave the Hurricanes a 1-0 lead at 16:05 of the second period on a wrist shot from the top of the left circle on the power play. It was his third goal in three games.
"He wants the puck," Carolina coach Rod Brind'Amour said. "Obviously that was just a high-end play all the way around. His goal was a high-end goal. I don't think people realize how hard that is, what he's doing over there on that off side to catch and turn and fire it that hard. It's a skill set not many guys can do. Obviously he was the difference-maker tonight."
Forsberg scored 46 seconds later to tie it 1-1 at 16:51 with a wrist shot from the slot for his third goal in three games.
"We've got to take some lessons," Nashville coach John Hynes said. "There are several things we need to do a little bit better, our rush defense and our transition to defense where we gave up some of those odd-man rushes. But I thought there was a lot of good minutes and we've got to build on some of the positives as we've got the same team [Tuesday]."

Hurricanes forward Teuvo Teravainen took a combined three shifts in the second and third periods.
"He tweaked something," Brind'Amour said. "We kind of kept him around for the one power play because he said he thought he could kind of stand over there and work his magic. I'm not sure where he stands for [Tuesday]."
NOTES: Carolina defenseman Dougie Hamilton did not have a shot on goal. That ended a streak of 296 consecutive games with at least one shot on goal. … If Forsberg scores a goal against the Hurricanes on Tuesday, he will tie his own Predators record for most consecutive games to begin a season with at least one goal, set last season.