Kings End Predators' Streak WIth 6-1 Win

The Los Angeles Kings were disappointed in their loss in St Louis on Thursday night and made the Nashville Predators pay dearly in handing then a 6-1 beating at the Bridgestone Arena on Saturday night in front of 16,734 fans.

You can call it puck luck, or the hockey gods, or whatever, but every good bounce that the Predators had gotten during their ten game point streak came back and went the other way against the Kings.

Barry Trotz took the loss in stride, "They came out and jumped early. They got some goals where they were going to the net hard and got some funky goals. Even the first one we had it covered and it goes back to the guy for a tap in as he was going by the net. It was one of those nights. I probably won't even look at the game."

Ryan Smyth led the Kings charge with two goals. Drew Doughty, Trevor Lewis, and Alexei
Ponikarovsky each had a goal and an assist. Justin Williams had the other goal. Dustin Brown and Oscar Moller each had two assists.

The Predators lone goal came from Steve Sullivan with Ryan Suter and Colin Wilson adding assists. Sergei Kostitsyn's point streak was stopped after eight games.

Anders Lindback, who had been faultless in the last two weeks, let in three goals on nine shots before being replaced by Mark Dekanich at 9:59 in the first period. It was Dekanich's first NHL game and he stopped 22 of 25 shots.

Jonathan Bernier got the win for the Kings and fought off 29 of 30 predator shots.

The game could not have gotten off to a worse start for the Preds as Williams score just 15 seconds into the contest. Lewis and Doughty scored 70 seconds apart midway through the first period.

Steve Sullivan then scored 24 seconds after Doughty's goal and the Preds appeared to have a little spark. At 14:48, Steve Begin was called for boarding and Smyth followed with a power play goal at 15:32 to give the Kings a 4-1 lead to end the period.

In the second period, Ponikarovsky scored 3:43 into the period and that was the goal that Trotz claimed made it "game, set, and match." Smyth scored again at 16:04 as the second period ended with the Kings up 6-1. There was no scoring in the third period.

In spite of the loss, Dekanich was excited about his first NHL game, "I got to play a game in the NHL and that's a dream come true."

Steve Sullivan did not play in the third period. Trotz described the situation, "He just has a little bit of an aggravating type of injury and we just wanted it to settle down. The game was at that point where we didn't wan to push it." Trotz indicated that it was a "lower body injury."

"I don't want to say were were due for this but one of these will happen in an 82 game schedule and everything just ends up in your net,' said Barry Trotz. "Our best remedy for that is regroup and make sure that we have two games before Christmas that we need to focus on and see if we can collect four points."

The Predators will have Sunday off before returning to the ice on Monday to prepared for Wednesdays game in Chicago. The final game before Christmas will be against Ottawa at the Bridgestone Arena on Thursday.

More Later...

Buddy Oakes for PredsOnTheGlass