The Nashville Predators won their third consecutive game Saturday night with a 4-2 come from behind victory over the Dallas Stars. The win was Nashville’s third-straight, and fourth in their last five games.
Over the course of the first two periods, the teams played a pretty even game, but the Predators turned up the pressure on the tired Stars in the third period and rallied from a 2-1 deficit at the second intermission into three third period goals to earn the victory.
The Stars’ third period weariness can largely be attributed to the fact that they were beaten by the Florida Panthers Friday night in a wild 6-5 shootout game in Dallas. Saturday night was the Stars’ third game in four nights.
Steve Sullivan, Patric Hornqvist, and Kevin Klein scored goals 8:25 apart in the final stanza of Saturday night’s game.
All three of those players ended long goal-scoring droughts at the right time.
Sullivan had not scored since his opening night goal against the Stars in Dallas, a span of eleven games. Hornqvist ended a ten-game drought, and Klein’s last goal came February 12th, 39 games ago.
“There was no doubt in our minds coming into the dressing room, we thought we were taking the play to them, even though they outshot us and had a few power plays in the second period,” Sullivan said. “We had no doubt this was our game for the taking, so we just had to go out and continue what we were doing.”
Sullivan tied the game 2-2 at the 3:17 mark of the third with a nice wrist shot from the right circle. He goal was aided by a screen of Dallas goaltender Alex Auld by David Legwand, who may have had his best game of the season Saturday.
Hornqvist put the cap on a furious scramble in the Dallas zone at 10:59. Hornqvist, Legwand and Dan Hamhuis were all buzzing the Dallas goal, before Hornqvist picked up a loose puck in the crease and pulled it to his forehand before lifting a wrist shot just underneath the crossbar.
Klein’s goal was a slapper from the right side through traffic, mainly in the form of an Auld screen courtesy of Mike Santorelli.
Shea Weber scored Nashville’s first goal, a power-play goal, at 12:44 of the first. That’s three consecutive games the Predators have tallied with the man-advantage. The All-Star defenseman was some cause for concern later in the game, as he played just 32-seconds of the final period.
Following the game, Weber said he was fine.
“I got benched,” he joked.
Weber blocked a Brenden Morrow shot in the second period that seemed to take its toll on Weber. Predators head coach Barry Trotz thought it was best to just shut Weber down for the third.
“He had lost his edge and just got banged up a little bit, so it was one thing after another, so we just kept his ice time down,” Trotz said.
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