Preds Conclude Two-Game Set with Loss to Hurricanes

Roman Josi scored the lone Nashville goal, as the Predators fell to the Carolina Hurricanes, 3-1, on Saturday night at PNC Arena. The result keeps Nashville winless in six tries this season against Carolina, with 49 points overall for the Preds in the Central Division standings.
Juuse Saros made 45 saves on the evening, including 23 in the opening period alone, and forward Matt Duchene returned to the Nashville lineup after missing 22 games due to injury, but the Predators were unable to find a way to prevail.

"I felt good. I kind of expected to have a lot more rust, but I felt pretty good right away and thought our line created a lot of chances," Duchene said. "As a team, I mean terrible first, but [the Hurricanes] do that, they come out and shoot everything. I thought we were a little tight, maybe a little tentative, then once we started stretching and getting aggressive, I thought we were a lot better. The winning goal of the draw, it's just unfortunate for us, and it could have been our game tonight."

"We got outplayed in the first period, and a lot of it was they're on top of us and our execution and pace of play wasn't as good as it needs to be in puck battles," Preds Head Coach John Hynes said. "They won a lot of them in the first, and I thought we did a better job in the second in those areas, climbed out way back into the game and we didn't find a way to get one."
Saros stopped 23 of the 24 Hurricanes shots he saw in the opening 20 minutes, but late in the period, Jaccob Slavin found the back of the net to give Carolina a 1-0 lead. The Predators got back to their game in the second stanza, and midway through the frame, Josi sniped a shot from the slot past Alex Nedjelkovic to even the score at 1-1 after two periods.

In the final frame, Jani Hakanpaa converted when he wristed a shot past Saros right off a faceoff, and Carolina added an empty-netter before the night was done.
Defenseman Erik Gudbranson made his Predators debut on Saturday after he was acquired via trade from Ottawa last Monday. The veteran blueliner was predominantly paired alongside Ben Harpur and recorded three hits and a shot in 15:40 of time on ice.
"He looked good," Hynes said of Gudbranson. "He's a big guy, he skates well, I thought he moved the puck pretty well, he joined the rush early in the game and looked good. Defensively, he was pretty solid. He made a lot of good plays tonight, I thought he kept it simple but executed well and had some good shots on net from an offensive perspective. Then defensively, it was what we expected - big, rangy guy, he's hard along the wall, hard at the netfront, so a nice first game for him."
The Predators now have only 10 games remaining in the regular season, and as the race for fourth in the division tightens, Nashville's next three games will come against one of the clubs vying for that spot, the Chicago Blackhawks.
"It's unfortunate to lose those kinds of coin flip, jump ball games, but we can't hang our heads here," Duchene said. "We've been on a great run, and we've got Chicago three times in a row coming up. Everyone knows how big those games are."
"They're huge games, and we all know that," Josi said. "Every game is huge. Tonight was a huge game, and I thought we kind of got away from our identity a little bit tonight in the first. We've just got to get back to playing to our identity for 60 minutes, and it's going to be really important against Chicago."

Notes:
Duchene took Rem Pitlick's spot in the lineup, and Pitlick remained on Nashville's taxi squad for the game. Defenseman Jeremy Davies was scratched in favor of Gudbranson.
The Predators will return home to begin a crucial three-game set against the Chicago Blackhawks with one game at Bridgestone Arena on Monday night (at 7 p.m. CT;
buy tickets
) before the series shifts to the United Center on Wednesday and Friday.