Friday, October 31, 2008

Predators Play Best Game of the Year to Beat the Oilers

Martin Erat fires one past Mathieu Garon in the third period

On Thursday night, we came out with a lot of fire. Our defense played extremely well, with Pekka Rinne to back it all up.


A bit over a minute into the game, Erik Cole got a breakaway chance on Pekka Rinne. It went off the right pad and into the cornor. Pekka Rinne was getting fired up. About halfway into the period, Shea Weber took a pass right off the face off and drilled it at the net. Patric Hornqvist deflected it for his 2nd goal of the year. The rest of the period, our defense was amazing. We kept the puck in their end for most of the period.


Right off the bat in the second period, Shea Weber, again, blasted it from the blue line for a goal. About 20 seconds after that goal, the ref called Rinne for roughing. The situation went from bad to worse when Greg Zanon, in an attempt to clear it, shot it out of play and got called for delay of game. Not to mention he hit some guy in the temple and made him bleed like crazy. Shouldn’t have been standing there. With about 35 seconds left on the 5-on-3, Sheldon Souray shot one that bounced off of Rinne’s side and into the net. A few minutes later, we had two really good chances. Mathieu Garon stayed solid through them, though. We looked really good this period.


Almost a minute into the final period, Shea Weber totally laid out Fernando Pisani. That got the crowd going. Ten minutes into the third, David Legwand passed it up to Martin Erat, who snapped it passed Garon. For the rest of the period, Pekka stayed strong in goal and didn’t let another puck pass by him. It was a great performance by him tonight.


The 5-on-3 was a bit rough on our penalty kill, but other than that we killed the other three off. Our power-play…again was terrible. There is nothing good to say about our power-play.


That’s about all I can think of. The Preds won’t be home again for another 16 days after Saturday's tilt with the Panthers.


Jackson Oakes for PredsOnTheGlass


No comments: