Chicago @ Nashville 1-5
Patrick Kane scored for the Blackhawks to extend his point streak to 24 games, but first-period goals by James Neal, Craig Smith and Filip Forsberg propelled the Predators to a 5-1 win at Bridgestone Arena. Neal gave the Predators a 1-0 lead at 6:54. He retrieved the puck around Niklas Hjalmarsson, corralled it in the left circle and beat goaltender Scott Darling with a wrist shot. Smith gave the Predators a 2-0 lead at 15:56 on a scramble in front of the net. Viktor Arvidsson led a 2-on-1 rush and passed to Smith, who got his stick on the puck and was able to slide it past Darling for his sixth goal. Forsberg gave the Predators a 3-0 lead 37 seconds later on a power play. Roman Josi lofted the puck toward the front of the net; Forsberg was left alone and beat Darling for his sixth goal. Chicago coach Joel Quenneville wasn't happy with the way his team came out to start the game. Kane made it 3-1 at 5:43 of the third period. Duncan Keith took a shot, and Marcus Kruger was able to knock the rebound loose from Rinne. Kane got the puck and slid it under Rinne for his 18th goal.
Nashville challenged Kane's goal for goaltender interference but the ruling on the ice was upheld. Neal scored his second goal of the game to make it 4-1 at 14:55 of the third. He stole the puck from Kane and led a 2-on-1 with Calle Jarnkrok. Neal elected to shoot and beat Darling with a wrist shot from the left circle for his 12th goal. Eric Nystrom scored an empty-net goal to make it 5-1 at 18:46. Rinne made 35 saves. Nashville improved to 9-3-2 at home and hopes to build on the win after struggling to string victories together during the past 12 games. Chicago hosts the Winnipeg Jets on Friday; Nashville plays the Colorado Avalanche at Bridgestone Arena on Saturday.
James Neal: "I think it was one of our best periods of the year. I think every guy wanted to respond from our game in Chicago [a 4-1 loss Tuesday]. That was a tough one for us so coming back home and having Chicago again was great for our team. I think we did a great job on every line. The first shift was big, and it got us rolling."
"Throughout the lows, you've just got to keep going I think. You're going to go through dips throughout the year, but I think we're growing as a team and we're getting older. We know how to battle through those. It shows with our response tonight in our game."
Craig Smith: "We were ready, but we were ready to play fast I think. We just wanted to hit holes and just regardless of what happened just to move our feet and play fast. I think that way you can kind of catch their defense. If there's a quick scrum and the puck kind of slips loose, you can catch them. If you turn it over, you've still got speed to get back and go the other way."
Peter Laviolette: "Guys were ready to play. Offensively we were on the go and defensively we were tight. There were a couple of big saves by [goaltender Pekka Rinne] in the first period that probably get hidden a little bit by the way we played, but sometimes those are the hardest saves when there's not a lot of action."
"They're a good hockey team. I told the guys afterwards you can't expect to play 60 minutes the way you like against Chicago. You've got to hope to play more good minutes than they do. What I really liked about our club was when they made it 3-1, I really liked our response from that point on."
Pekka Rinne: "It's a huge win for us, and I'm really happy with the way we stuck with it at the end there. We had to defend and defended really well at the end there, so big win."
Joel Quenneville: "It was an ugly start. They blitzed us right off the bat, and we didn't have a response to it. Maybe we woke up in the second period, but that was hard to watch, that first 20 minutes. That's as ugly as I've seen us play."
Andrew Shaw: "It's nice to see [Kane continue his streak], but I know he's the type of guy that would rather have a win than keep the streak going."
Columbus @ Winnipeg 4-6
The Jets scored three goals in the first 10:48 and outlasted the Columbus Blue Jackets 6-4 at MTS Centre. Mathieu Perreault had a goal and three assists for the Jets, who have won their past three games at home but are still sixth in the Central Division. Mathieu Perreault had a goal and three assists while Winnipeg rookie goaltender Connor Hellebuyck made 25 saves and won for the fourth time in as many NHL starts. The line of Perreault, Drew Stafford and Mark Scheifele combined for nine points (three goals, six assists). Columbus is 1-3-2 in its past six games and at 11-17-2 is last in the overall NHL standings. The Blue Jackets outshot the Jets 17-9 in the third period and got within 5-4 on two late goals by Cam Atkinson before Blake Wheeler hit the empty net with 44.3 seconds remaining. Alexander Wennberg had three assists for the Blue Jackets, and Ryan Johansen had two. As the Jets prepared to for a game at the Chicago Blackhawks on Friday, Maurice did not dwell on the Blue Jackets' late push. Blue Jackets goaltender Curtis McElhinney started in place of Sergei Bobrovsky, who went on injured reserve Thursday with a lower-body injury that is expected to keep him out of the lineup for three weeks. With Bobrovsky in net, the Blue Jackets had allowed 12 goals in their past seven games. However, McElhinney endured a rocky beginning in his first start since Nov. 19. The Jets scored on three of their first five shots. Scheifele scored his 11th goal of the season 27 seconds into the game, and Adam Lowry's first made it 2-0 at 2:22. Dustin Byfuglien followed with a power-play goal at 10:48. Atkinson said the Blue Jackets wanted to pressure Hellebuyck early; however, they were outshot 10-5 in the first period and 26-12 through two periods. But Columbus eventually pushed back. Bonne Jenner's 12th goal at 15:38 of the first period cut the margin to 3-1, and Scott Hartnell's power-play goal with 56 seconds to go in the second period got the Blue Jackets within a goal. However, Stafford scored his 10th of the season when he poked a rebound through McElhinney's pads 4:03 into the third period to give Winnipeg a 4-2 lead. Perreault's fourth of the season at 7:36 made it 5-2. Atkinson beat Hellebuyck with a wrist shot at 13:21 and scored again with 1:44 remaining and McElhinney on the bench for an extra attacker before Wheeler's empty-netter sealed the win. Bobrovsky had started the past nine games before his injury. It was McElhinney's fourth start since Oct. 20. Having relieved Bobrovsky late in the third period in the loss against Los Angeles, it was also the first time that McElhinney had appeared in back-to-back games since Oct. 17-20. Hellebuyck, 22, has won his first four NHL starts, tying a franchise record set by Kari Lehtonen in the 2003-04 season. But Hellebuyck, who has a 1.71 goals-against average and a .939 save percentage, said he has more work to do.
Paul Maurice: "I think they're capable of having a night like this, but they haven't been giving up anything [defensively] to do it, so that's what is encouraging about them. We'll fix the problems and keep working on them," Maurice said. "There are no style points in the NHL."
Mathieu Perreault: "Give them credit for not quitting. We [twice] had a three-goal lead, and they came back and almost made it a tie game."
Connor Hellebuyck: "I definitely have to tighten some things up on my end, but I thought we played a good game. Just getting pieces of pucks is not enough in this League."
Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella had wanted a much better effort from his players after a 3-2 overtime loss against the Los Angeles Kings on Tuesday, a game that Tortorella whined "totally embarrassed" him. He also complained any thought that falling behind early inhibited the Blue Jackets' plan to atone for the loss to the Kings.
"That shouldn't hinder that at all. That shouldn't put us into a situation where we don't generate much for quite a bit of that first half of the game."
But Tortorella continued to moan despite the Blue Jackets' third-period push.
"We lost the game. We lost the game. [Repeating himself to emphasize his whining] We can break it down all you want as far as a push here [whine here], a push there [whine there]. We didn't play well enough to win. [Everybody whine whine, Old Tortorella, likes a good old whine, ee aye ee aye oh!]
"I can go into it all night long [you mean you haven't already?], but I'd rather not do it right now [No this moan is just the warm up, better give us more later on eh?]. We didn't play well enough. We had a push at the end, but we didn't play well enough to win. In all areas. I thought we were just a little too light on the puck. We lost too many battles. The fourth [Winnipeg] goal, we had a chance to get it out. We turn it over." [I wish he would turn it over he's become like a stuck record. He Whines more than a Nascar engine].
Even the Jets supporters got in on the act:
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck-daddy/jets-fans-mock-john-tortorella-with-cutout-behind-blue-jackets-bench--video-052548334.html
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