Sunday, January 8, 2012

The Evening After Round-Up: Predators 5, Hurricanes 2

Almost everything went right for the Nashville Predators in last night's 5-2 win over the Carolina Hurricanes in front of the eighth straight sellout at Bridgestone Arena.

The power play converted four of five times, scoring contribution was widespread, and Pekka Rinne played well enough to get a shutout for most of the contest. That being said, the Hurricanes are not a very good team and offered little resistance to the Predator attack.

After going 0-16 on the man advantage in the last five games, the effort against the Canes moved the power play back into second place (22.0 %) in the NHL behind Vancouver (24.2 %)

The game was one where it was imperative that the Preds pick up two points. The Western Conference is tightly bunched and losing points against weak teams are not an option in the Central Division.

In fact, four of the top six teams in the conference are from the Central Division. Heading into Sunday's action, St. Louis had the division lead (53 points), and Chicago (52), Detroit (51), and Nashville (48) occupied fourth through sixth place.

After stubbing their toe twice recently against Dallas (47 points-8th place), the upcoming back to back games at Colorado (47 points - 10th place) on Tuesday and the Avalanche here on Thursday, require the Preds to be point collectors against a team directly on their heels.

The Predators will practice at 10:30 Monday Morning and then fly to Denver in the afternoon.

Here is our game story from last night and Barry Trotz's postgame presser.  Make the jump for the full round-up of everything from the game...


Main Stream Media...

Mike Organ: (The Tennessean) Game story - Notes - Postgame Ponderings
David Boclair (The City Paper)
Jim Diamond' Musings (Preds.com)
NHL.com

Digital Media...

Ryan Porth (Smashville 24/7) Game Story - One More Thing
Amanda DiPaolo (Inside Smashville)
Mark Willoughby (The View from 111)
Robby Stanley (Hockey Night in Nashville)
Jeremy Gover (Section 303)
Patten Fuqua (Puck Scene) Story - PuckCast
Marc Torrence (On The Forecheck)
Kris Martel (Predatorial)
Laura Hutchings (Lady Preds)
Fang Finger

Carolina Media...

Canes.com
Canes Country
The News Observer


Audio from the Predators comes from....

Craig Smith
Ryan Ellis
Patric Hornqvist

From Carolina, we hear from...

Coach Kirk Muller
Justin Peters
Jay Harrison

Three Stars of the Game...

1. Patric Hornqvist
2. Pekka Rinne
3. Ryan Ellis

Highlights come from NHL.com....



More Later...

Buddy Oakes for PredsOnTheGlass

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