Forsberg Scores in Return as Preds Conclude Road Trip with Loss to Blues

Filip Forsberg scored in his return to the lineup, but the Nashville Predators fell to the St. Louis Blues by a 5-3 final on Monday night at Enterprise Center. The result gives the Preds one point in their last three outings with the completion of a two-game road trip over the holiday weekend.
Ryan Johansen and Yakov Trenin also tallied in the loss, and Juuse Saros made 24 saves on the night in a game that saw the Predators do some good things, but they also know other aspects could have been better.

"I liked our competitiveness, I liked our work ethic in the game and I think that was where we needed to be in a big, physical, hard game," Preds Head Coach John Hynes said. "I liked the way that the team competed… But our discipline and details on our rush defense, just pinches without an F-3 and giving up some odd-man rushes, we weren't good enough in that area. That's the area of the game that cost us was just our rush details and understanding when we have support to be aggressive with our defenseman and when we're not, so it's something we've got to clear up."
The Predators jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the opening period - first as Matt Duchene fed Johansen across the slot to beat Blues goaltender Ville Husso for a 1-0 advantage, and Forsberg converted on a beautiful individual effort at the 15:50 mark to go up by two goals.

But before the first frame was out, the Blues evened the score with goals from Ivan Barbeshev and Ryan O'Reilly, and then two more goals in the first six minutes of the second stanza - one from Braden Schenn and another from Barbashev - gave St. Louis a 4-2 lead after 40 minutes.
"I thought we started great, and we came out ready to play and took it to them pretty good in the first," Forsberg said. "They got two goals late in the period to make it 2-2, which I obviously didn't think was the result it should have been, but at the same time they're a good team. They've got some great players to make plays... Then in the second period we gave them a couple too many odd man rushes early on, and they obviously capitalized on two early. I think we were battling hard throughout the whole game, there's just some of the execution that kind of got us tonight."

Trenin brought the Preds back to within one midway through the third as Nashville made a late push, but Schenn's second of the night put things out of reach before the night came to an end.
The Predators won't have to wait long for a chance to reverse their fortunes as they'll host the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday night at Bridgestone Arena, and the group is aware of what needs to change from one evening to the next.
"Just the execution part," Forsberg said. "I think we're putting in the work - obviously it's a division game, and they're a great team and we're putting in the work, I think we just shot ourselves in the foot a little bit early in the second with a couple of decisions that that ended up in the back of our net, and you can't do that against good teams like that. Vancouver tomorrow is going to be a highly skilled, young, fast team, and obviously that's something that we know we can't do against them."
"You've got to take the quick lesson out of the game now," Hynes said. "Our rush defense and when we pinch and when we don't pinch has to be better. We gave up too many odd-man rushes, whether it was from some puck play or some decision making, and we've got to clear up those two components. We've got to re-rack and be ready to go tomorrow."

Notes:

Forsberg returned to the lineup after missing four games due to time spent on the NHL's COVID-19 protocol list, but defenseman Dante Fabbro was absent on Monday and is listed as week-to-week with an upper-body injury.
The Predators will begin a three-game homestand on Tuesday night when they host Vancouver, and that contest will be followed by meetings with Winnipeg on Thursday and Detroit on Saturday at Bridgestone Arena.