Juuse Saros made 33 saves, but the Nashville Predators were unable to find the scoresheet as they fell to the Seattle Kraken by a 3-0 final on Wednesday night at Climate Pledge Arena. The result sees the Preds drop the last outing of their five-game road trip to finish the excursion with a 1-2-2 record.
“I thought we played with some pretty good pace, but obviously scoring is hard to come by right now, and our margins and mistakes are so small,” Preds Head Coach Andrew Brunette said. “I thought we had some stretches where we looked like us, and created a little bit, [we] failed to get in the inside. And we made some catastrophic mistakes that really, really hurt us right now.”
“It’s disappointing,” Preds Alternate Captain Ryan O’Reilly said. “It was definitely there for us. We're not putting the puck in right now. I myself am not putting the puck in right now. It's tough because [our] goaltending is great to give us a chance to win these games, and we aren’t scoring. It’s frustrating for everyone.”
Neither team found the back of the net through the game’s first 35-plus minutes, but late in the second stanza, Daniel Sprong beat Saros to give Seattle a 1-0 lead heading into the third period.
The Kraken doubled their advantage when Brandon Montour scored on the first shift of the final frame, and after Tommy Novak and the Preds had a goal overturned due to kicking the puck into the net, Seattle added one more into an empty cage to finish off the night.
Now, the Predators will return back home to host Winnipeg on Saturday night where they’ll try to get back into the win column.
“There are a lot of things that we need to be better at,” O’Reilly said. “We didn't create any offense…putting the puck in the net is the biggest thing. We still got some chances, but it still wasn't consistent. We did good things, but [we’re] just not scoring. We have to help out each other and find a way to put it in.”
“I think it's kind of been the same old story a little bit,” Brunette said. “We’re just kind of being ourselves at certain times, and again, the margins when you're not scoring or not feeling it right now, they're tiny and we're losing the margin game a bit. And we don't really have enough mojo to overcome that. All in all, you feel pretty good about the road trip, obviously would’ve liked to get something out of tonight, [but we] go back home and keep trying to build our game here.”
Notes:
Prior to Wednesday’s game, the Preds reassigned defenseman Adam Wilsby to Milwaukee (AHL). Forward Philip Tomasino reentered the Nashville lineup on Wednesday night in Seattle; wingers Luke Evangelista and Mark Jankowski were scratched against the Kraken.
The Predators will now return home from their five-game trip to host the Winnipeg Jets on Saturday night at Bridgestone Arena for a 6 p.m. CT puck drop.
