Monday, May 2, 2011

The Morning After (A Day Late) Game 2: Predators 2 - Canucks 1, 2 OT

After a late night on Saturday and meeting the plane yesterday, we fell a day behind with our Morning After post, so please forgive us.

Saturday's win was indeed One for the Ages as we said in the wee hours of Sunday morning. That post and title received same backlash from the Vancouver fans who simply thought it was a bad game for the Canucks. It was only bad for the Canucks in that the Predators defense completely stifled everything they tried to do.



As I watched the game on Saturday, I realized that over the years, throughout the history of the franchise, when we had either not made the playoffs or exited quickly, that Predator fans had never had the pleasure/torture of a long overtime game in a meaningful series against the best team in the NHL during the regular season.

I've seen plenty of overtime games with other teams and watched out of a morbid curiosity and not with ownership of either team. When the Predators went to double OT with San Jose, it was a home game and was not late at night so it seemed different. So this was really the first late night experience for Preds fans.

The turnaround between game one and two was incredible. No one really has an answer for the no-show in game one. Pekka Rinne said yesterday that they weren't prepared. Barry Trotz said he really did not know but said the team's "mindset" was not right.

I asked Trotz if it was a lesson learned and he said that every game was a learning experience and that he hoped they had learned from their game one experience.

Even with the Predators big win on Saturday well in the rear view mirror, I still would say it was one of the biggest games in team history. Hopefully, we will see more memorable experiences in the days and weeks to come as the Predators play hockey in May for the first time in team history.


Predators-Canucks Game Two Round-Up...

Here is our game story from Saturday night. We also had Pekka Rinne and Barry Trotz speaking on their return to the Nashville Airport.

Josh Cooper had his game story, notes column, and postgame ponderings.

Teresa Walker has her post on the game for the AP.

David Boclair has his story at The City Paper.

From the blog world reports come from Amanda DiPaolo, Mark Willoughby, Marc Torrence, Paul McCann, Jeremy Gover, Predatorial, and Fang Faction.

Dirk Hoag has the audio of Pete Weber's call of the game tying goal by Ryan Suter as well as the game winner by Matt Halischuk.

Pekka Rinne was the first star of the day and Matt Haliscuck was number two at Sports Illustrated. Pekka was first and Ryan Suter third at Puck Daddy.

The other side of the story comes from all the fine media outlets listed in the right column.

In one article of note, The Vancouver Sun points out that Matt Halischuk has the game winning goal in overtime for Canada in the Gold Medal game to win the championship.

Here are the highlights from NHL.com.



More Later...

Buddy Oakes for PredsOnTheGlass

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