Filip Forsberg will look to break his own franchise record by scoring a goal in his eighth straight game on Saturday night when the Nashville Predators finish a two-game California road trip against the Anaheim Ducks.
Forsberg scored twice in a 6-5 victory over the host San Jose Sharks on Thursday to matching the franchise mark of seven he set last March 13-28. Forsberg, who went 18 games without a goal before the streak started, has scored nine times over the last seven games.
Nashville takes a five-game winning streak into Anaheim and has scored 19 goals over its last three games. The Predators have produced five or more goals in four of their last five games after totaling five goals in a game just twice in their first 42 games.
“It’s great,” Forsberg said. “We’re finding ways to win in games where earlier in the season we didn’t.”
No better example of that was a 7-5 come-from-behind victory over the Sharks on Tuesday in Nashville in the first game of a home-and-home. The Predators trailed 5-1 early in the second period before scoring six consecutive goals over the final 28 minutes for the first four-goal comeback in team history.
“We’re believing,” Nashville head coach Andrew Brunette said. “We seem to get tighter as a group every game. We’ve got some things to clean up. We’re still trying to stack some things, stacking on big momentum from the other night by a big comeback.
“I think we’re starting to understand when we do certain things and play a certain way, it’s fun to play, it’s good to play. We’re getting rewarded for it, so we’ll keep chipping away where we are and fight to keep that feeling.”
Despite the win streak, Nashville still finds itself seventh in the Central Division with 43 points, 10 points behind Calgary for the final wild-card playoff spot in the Western Conference.
Anaheim, which is seventh in the Pacific Division, is a point ahead of Nashville in the West standings despite a recent four-game losing streak (0-3-1) that was snapped with a 5-1 victory over the visiting Pittsburgh Penguins on Thursday.
Mason McTavish and Alex Killorn both scored twice and John Gibson stopped 31 shots for the Ducks, who rank last in the NHL in scoring with 118 goals and an average of 2.46 goals per game. Anaheim had been shut out in three of its six previous games.
“Obviously, we haven’t been getting the results lately,” Gibson said of a 1-5-2 stretch heading into Thursday’s win. “We talked about a lot of stuff over the last few days. We needed to get a win for everybody. It was nice to get a win here tonight and have a lot of guys contribute and everybody pulling the same way.”
Anaheim had scored just eight goals in its six previous games.
“It was awesome,” McTavish said of the Ducks’ win. He nearly had a hat trick but hit the post on an empty-net try.
“The team played well. Obviously nice to see some goals go in, and hopefully we can keep it up,” McTavish added.
–Field Level Media
