Two teams coming off seven-goal outbursts meet Thursday when the Nashville Predators face the Utah Hockey Club in Salt Lake City.
The down side for the hosts is that they were eliminated from the Western Conference playoff chase when the Minnesota Wild beat the San Jose Sharks 8-7 in overtime on Wednesday.
A 7-1 win over the Seattle Kraken on Tuesday was Utah’s most dominant performance of the season. Utah (36-30-12, 84 points) scored the most goals in any game during the franchise’s inaugural season and outshot the Kraken by a 41-19 margin.
Mikhail Sergachev (one goal, two assists) and Dylan Guenther (three assists) led the way on the scoresheet, but it was an all-around effort from Utah. Seven different players scored goals, and 12 different players had at least one point.
“You see where in every game, our offense can come from everywhere, like tonight,” Utah coach Andre Tourigny said. “The power play was really good, but as well, we had scoring from other lines. So that made a difference.”
Utah’s power play unit is 6-for-12 over its last three games, after struggling through a 1-for-24 drought in its previous 10 games.
While Utah led all the way against Seattle, the Predators trailed on four different occasions during Tuesday’s 7-6 overtime win over the New York Islanders. Nashville was down 6-4 heading into the final 2:07 of regulation before Steven Stamkos scored a power-play goal, and Michael Bunting added another power-play marker with just 40 seconds remaining.
Fedor Svechkov then scored 1:56 into the extra frame to deliver Nashville (28-42-8, 64 points) its wildest victory of a difficult season.
“Kind of just a crazy night, one of those throwback games with a lot of goals,” said Stamkos, who had two goals and two assists. “Obviously a long time coming for us … I think (Predators assistant coach Todd Richards) made a joke about the hockey gods not really rewarding us for goals. So, we got some tonight, so it was great to see.”
The Predators are averaging 29.4 shots per game, one of the better totals in the NHL. However, Nashville’s goals-per-game average of 2.54 is among the lowest in the league.
Tuesday’s win kept the Predators from making some ignominious franchise history. Nashville had lost its previous six games, and a regulation loss against the Islanders would’ve matched the Predators’ team-record streak of seven straight losses (set during the 2012-13 season).
Filip Forsberg leads Nashville in both goals (30) and assists (42).
Utah also has an all-category points leader in Clayton Keller, who has 27 goals and 57 assists. Keller is two points away from matching his career best of 86 points, set during the 2022-23 season.
Karel Vejmelka has started each of Utah’s last 21 games and has an impressive 2.41 goals against average and .903 save percentage during this ironman streak. If Utah decides to finally give Vejmelka a rest, backup Matt Villalta would receive his second career NHL start.
Juuse Saros will likely be the Predators’ starting goaltender Thursday. Nashville has been mostly rotating its goalies over the last several weeks, so Saros figures to get the nod since Justus Annunen played against the Islanders.
Saros recorded a 27-save shutout in the last meeting between Nashville and Utah, a 4-0 Predators win on Nov. 9. After Thursday’s contest, the Predators and Utah will meet once more in Nashville on Monday to conclude the season series.
–Field Level Media
