NHL - Central - Thursday, October 22, 2015

Anaheim Sucks @ Nashville 1-5
Defenseman Ryan Ellis scored one goal and set up two others in his return to the lineup to lead the Predators to a 5-1 win against the Sucks at Bridgestone Arena. Ellis missed Nashville's shootout victory against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday with a lower-body injury after blocking a shot in a win at the Ottawa Senators on Saturday. Pekka Rinne made 27 saves for the Predators, who have won all four of their games at Bridgestone Arena. Jiri Sekac scored a power-play goal with 7:45 remaining in the third period and goaltender Anton Khudobin made 24 saves for the Ducks, who lost the opener of a five-game road trip. Eric Nystrom opened the scoring at 3:40 of the second period. Forward Austin Watson fed the puck cross-ice on a 2-on-1 rush, and Nystrom beat Khudobin for his second goal of the season. It was the seventh time in as many games that the Predators scored the first goal. Ellis gave the Predators a 2-0 lead at 12:47 of the second period on a one-timer from the left circle. Mike Ribeiro made a perfect pass and Ellis blasted a shot past Khudobin for his first goal of the season. It came nine seconds after a hooking penalty to Anaheim's Ryan Getzlaf expired. Ribeiro made it 3-0 at 17:00 when his bad-angled slap shot beat Khudobin. Ribeiro tried to feed Colin Wilson from the right circle, but his pass was blocked and came back to him. Ribeiro's shot got past Khudobin for his first goal. Defenseman Mattias Ekholm's breakaway goal at 3:03 of the third period made it 4-0. Ellis' lead pass sprung Ekholm past the Anaheim defense for a slap shot that went past Khudobin's blocker. Sekac got the Ducks on the board at 12:15 when he took a pass from Ryan Kesler and one-timed the puck past Rinne for his first goal and Anaheim's first power-play goal of the season. Wilson converted a feed from Ellis a power-play goal with 1:42 remaining. Nashville defenseman Barret Jackman returned after missing one game with an upper-body injury. Anaheim defenseman Clayton Stoner returned after missing three games with a lower-body injury.
Ryan Ellis: "Sitting out a game, I got my legs back and obviously felt good out there. The couple days' rest, or whatever it was, worked. Overall with the team, I thought that was probably our best game of the year, and we needed it tonight. On that power play, I got a lot of shot opportunities. [Defenseman Seth Jones] and [Ribeiro] did a great job of finding me. Overall, guys started shooting the puck. That's what we've talked about all year, and we got rewarded. [Anaheim] is a team we expect to be there down the stretch. They're good every year. They've hit a bit of a road bump to start, but we knew they'd be hungry, desperate. We had to have the same mentality of desperation. I think we had it tonight, and that was one of our better games. It was good to see."
Eric Nystrom: "I think we're starting to get better. There have been games that maybe we shouldn't have won in those six [wins], but we've found a way. I think tonight's game was an example of the type of team we are. You want to have that confidence going and get everything in the right direction, and we are right now. Winning hockey games and playing well is what you want as a team. Maybe early on in the first few games, we kind of had a false sense of confidence because we weren't playing our best but we were still winning. Now it's moving in the right direction for us. We're playing the way we're supposed to play."
Columbus Blue Jackets @ Minnesota 2-3

John Tortorella lost his first game as Blue Jackets coach, and they lost their eighth in a row to start the season, 3-2 to the Wild at Xcel Energy Center.
Columbus led 2-1 after one period and played perhaps its best game so far, but now has the second-longest losing streak to start an NHL season (the 1943-44 New York Rangers lost 11 in a row). Minnesota expected an early push from Columbus, the only NHL team without a point. The Wild scored first when Suter, pinching in the left corner, centered a pass to Zach Parise on the back door. The puck deflected off Parise's leg past Blue Jackets goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky at 5:04 of the first period. The goal was Parise's sixth, tied for first in the NHL with Jamie Benn of the Dallas Stars. Bobrovsky, who is 0-6-0, made 20 saves. He had a 5.07 goals-against average and .835 save percentage in five starts and admitted he felt responsibility for Richards getting fired. Bobrovsky was especially good late in the second period, making point-blank saves on Thomas Vanek and Charlie Coyle to keep Columbus within a goal. Columbus tied the game at 1-1 when Alexander Wennberg gathered a rebound of a Cody Goloubef shot near the left faceoff dot and beat Wild goaltender Devan Dubnyk at 10:16 of the first period. The Blue Jackets took the lead on a power-play goal by Brandon Dubinsky with 20.2 seconds remaining. After a failed clearing attempt by Minnesota defenseman Marco Scandella, Dubinsky beat Scandella to the right post and scored with a tip-in. Nino Niederreiter's rebound goal at 5:41 of the second pulled the Wild even at 2-2 before a redirection by Vanek from a bad angle gave Minnesota a 3-2 lead at 11:12. Vanek's goal came on a power play after Goloubef was given a hooking and a holding minor for a four-minute advantage. The goal was Minnesota's fifth on the power play but first by their second unit. Mikko Koivu assisted on Niederreiter's goal and has a point in five of six games, including four straight. Dubnyk made 27 saves.
Ryan Suter: "That was all the talk before the game: new coach, you knew they were going to be coming hard, 'We gotta weather the storm. You worry about that too much instead of going out and taking it to them."
Zach Parise: "We talked so much about how they were going to come out and how they were going to play. I don't know if we psyched ourselves out or what, but it was a pretty ugly start for us. But we were able to turn the page in the second period."
Mike Yeo: "Thomas is so dangerous in that area. That second unit definitely has the ability make some plays and create some goals."
Sergei Bobrovsky: "I felt pretty good, felt pretty confident out there. I thought guys worked really hard and they played hard. Unfortunately, we didn't get two points, but we're going to keep working. We'll get there."

Florida Panthers @ Chicago 2-3

The Blackhawks passed their first test without top defenseman Duncan Keith.
Brent Seabrook, Keith's former defense partner, had a goal and two assists to help the Blackhawks defeat the Panthers 3-2 at United Center in their first game without Keith. Keith had surgery to repair a meniscal tear in his right knee Tuesday and is expected to be out 4-6 weeks. The Blackhawks' second line combined for five points, led by right wing Patrick Kane's goal and two assists. Center Artem Anisimov scored a goal, and left wing Artemi Panarin extended his point streak to three games with the primary assist on Seabrook's power-play goal in the second period. Corey Crawford made 16 saves for the Blackhawks, who were 2-for-8 on the power play. Vincent Trocheck and Jaromir Jagr scored for the Panthers, who have lost three in a row. Goalie Roberto Luongo made 24 saves. Florida lost center Aleksander Barkov to an upper-body injury at 10:34 of the second period. Barkov did not return after blocking a shot by Blackhawks defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson. Without Barkov, Panthers coach Gerard Gallant had Jagr center the top line and bumped up Trocheck from the second line to play opposite left wing Jonathan Huberdeau. The Panthers worked shorthanded for much of the second period, when they were called for five penalties that all led to Blackhawks power plays and two of Chicago's goals. Seabrook made it 2-1 on a man-advantage at 3:51 with a shot from the point that sailed through traffic. Kane made it 3-1 seventeen seconds into the third period with a backhand shot off a rush during carryover time on Chicago's fifth power play of the game. Seabrook hit Kane in stride through the neutral zone, setting up Kane's rush up the left wing and to the low slot for the backhand shot that beat Luongo. It turned out to be the deciding goal after Jagr pulled Florida to within 3-2 during a 5-on-3 power play in the third. Blackhawks center Marcus Kruger was called for a high-sticking double minor at 5:28, and Hjalmarsson was called for delay of the game at 5:34 to create a lengthy two-man advantage. Toward the end of it, Jagr got to a loose puck in the crease for his fifth goal, with Nick Bjugstad and former Blackhawks center Dave Bolland getting the assists. It didn't take long for either team to get on the scoreboard in the first. Anisimov made it 1-0 at 4:02 with his third goal, and Trocheck countered with his second goal on the next shift, tying it 1-1 at 4:36. Chicago controlled most of the action in the first, finishing the period with a 12-5 advantage in shots and a 19-7 advantage in shot attempts. Jagr's goal moved him into a tie for third place with Teemu Selanne on the NHL's all-time list for power-play points (588).
Brent Seabrook: "You definitely miss him. He's one of those special players that you notice every time he's on the ice. Anytime he's not out there, you definitely miss him, but I think the guys stepped up. They did a good job. The defense did a good job of playing together. It was a team effort tonight and we're going to need that going forward. We worked on it [Wednesday] in practice. We tried it early [in the game]. They were taking it away, but [Kane] got free there. He ran the route, and I was just trying to make the pass and trying to find him. He ran a good route, and once he gets in, he's pretty hard to stop."
Joel Quenneville: "I thought we were solid. I thought we had a real strong game. I thought our team game, we had the puck in the offensive zone a lot, [and] didn't give them many opportunities. I thought we played a real strong team game and got a lot of contributions across the board, and the young guys on the back end looked fine."
Jaromir Jagr: "It's a big loss. He's our best player, and it's going to be tough to replace. Nobody knows for how long he's going to be out, so it's even tougher. But we've got to do it no matter what."
Gerard Gallant: "[Barkov] blocked a shot, and it got him somewhere on the arm or hand, in that area. I had to put [Trocheck] up there [on the first line]. When somebody gets hurt, you've got to throw somebody else up there. There were a lot of different line combinations in the second half of the game, trying to get something to work. You can't spend that much time [killing power plays]. When you're killing penalties, you're not getting scoring chances. Sixteen minutes of a hockey game in your own zone really wears on you. It was 3-1, it looked like it was over, but then we come back and get a big goal. We got a power play of our own and had a chance, and then we didn't get much after that."