The Nashville Predators fell 4-1 on Tuesday evening against the St. Louis Blues after getting home from a three-game road trip out west.
From start to finish the Blues transition game was dominant and head coach Andrew Brunette expected that coming into the contest.
“It was something we harped on and talked about,” Brunette said. “We’re just reluctant to do it. We kind of did it in LA and kind of like a lot of our game we consistently can’t do certain things night after night. It was almost like it’s not much fun and we didn’t want to do it. We gave them free offense and we knew going in and that’s the disappointing thing about it.”
Jordan Kyrou scored twice for the Blues and now has five goals in his last three games. Dylan Holloway led the way with three assists, the second time he’s accomplished that feat this season.
“It was a good lesson for us and how we have to play in a playoff-type game,” Fedor Svechkov said after the loss.
“Be more relentless and be heavy on the puck. Win the puck battles more. I think playing like that in games we’ll be more successful,” Svechkov said of what lessons he takes away from a loss like this.
The Blues struck first on the powerplay after Zachary L’Heureux tripped up Nick Leddy. With traffic in front of Saros the Blues moved the puck from the offensive corner and defenseman Justin Faulk converted on a slap shot to make it 1-0.
The Blues continued to minimize Nashville’s offensive looks and they continued to gel. Faulk picked up his second point of the night on a breakout that was started by Robert Thomas.
Faulk had Jake Neighbours swinging in wide and crashing the net. The D-man fed Neighbours a pass and the forward went to his forehand then backhand to slide it past Saros to make it 2-0.
Pandemonium ensued in the second frame as Michael McCarron delivered a crushing body check on Pavel Buchnevich behind the Blues net. Neighbours stuck up for his teammate and fought McCarron. The Blues forward was given a roughing and fighting penalty on the play while McCarron was handed a game misconduct and an interference penalty.
Nashville went on to kill off the five-minute major to keep it a two-goal contest.
Before going into the final frame the Blues put their third goal on the board after a clean breakout. Holloway fed Kyrou a pass and he spun around for a shot from the left circle to make it 3-0.
Brady Skjei had the final word to end the second stanza as he blasted a one-timer past Hofer to make it 3-1 with 0.6 remaining on the clock. Steven Stamkos threaded a pass over to Skjei to break up a shutout effort from Hofer.
The second fight of the night was ignited in the third period when Tyler Tucker leveled Luke Evangelista in front of the Nashville bench. Cole Smith dropped his mitts in response and the two went to the penalty box to pay their dues.
“We have momentum after [McCarron’s] fight and we had a good penalty kill that led to a goal at the end of the period,” Svechkov said. “Smith had a good fight and stood up for [Evangelista]. We can be a good team and we have to stand up for each other, it’s a good call to do something like that.”
St. Louis’ final dagger came off a lost faceoff when Stamkos went up against Brayden Schenn. Dylan Holloway picked up the loose puck and sped down the ice with Kyrou.
Kyrou buried the tap-in pass to make it 4-1 for the Blues to close out the scoring.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what we drew up or were thinking there, it wasn’t very pretty,” Brunette said of Stamkos’ gaffe on the faceoff.
Up Next
The Predators will host the Anaheim Ducks on Thursday night to close out their season series. Stay tuned for the action right here on 102.5 The Game with Pete Weber and Jay More on the call.
Follow Nick Kieser on Twitter/X: @KieserNick
Photos courtesy of Nashville Predators
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