The Nashville Predators ended a four-game losing streak as they erased a 2-0 deficit en route to a 5-2 home win over the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday night.
Filip Forsberg tallied two goals and an assist, Luke Evangelista piled up a goal and two assists, and Fedor Svechkov picked up a pair of assists for Nashville (26-35-8, 60 points).
Juuse Saros stopped 24 shots, while counterpart Joseph Woll turned aside 27 of the 31 shots he faced in the Maple Leafs’ crease.
Mitch Marner picked up a goal and an assist, John Tavares scored the game’s opening goal, while Auston Matthews had two assists for Toronto (42-25-3, 87 points).
Woll robbed Forsberg on the doorstep with 7:16 remaining in the middle frame as he quickly whipped his pad out to turn aside the sniper’s rebound opportunity.
After failing to score on his first shot, Forsberg got his revenge and poked his rebound past Woil to give the Predators the decisive lead with 47 seconds left in the second.
Tavares reached 30 goals for the seventh time in his career when he started the scoring on a power play less than 10 minutes into the contest.
Tavares fired his shot past Saros 11 seconds into the Maple Leafs’ man advantage.
Then with 6:55 left in the first period, Matthews won a face-off directly over to Marner, who wired his wrist shot into the top corner to double up the Maple Leafs’ advantage.
Just over a minute later, Toronto believed that they had gone up 3-0, but Scott Laughton’s tip-in goal was called back on a high stick.
Michael Bunting tallied a power-play goal against his former team to get the Predators back within one just 1:39 into the second period.
Svechkov fed a pass out front to Bunting, and the former Maple Leaf made no mistake as he buried his first goal with the Predators.
The Predators came down on a 2-on-1 with 10:45 left in the second and Kieffer Bellows didn’t hesitate as he fired his wrist shot into the back of the net to knot the game up at 2-2.
Evangelista took a perfect pass from Forsberg with 9:43 left in the contest and buried it to ice the game at 4-2.
Forsberg capped the night off with an empty-net goal.
–Field Level Media
