Chicago Blackhawks 5, Nashville Predators 4: Halischuk Scores Twice in Losing Effort

The Nashville Predators ended up on the losing end of a tight, back-and-forth game against the Chicago Blackhawks tonight, falling 5-4 in overtime. The Preds fought back to tie the game three times after Chicago took the lead, and Matt Halischuk set a personal best with his first two-goal game, but it wasn't enough to avoid the team's eleventh loss in their last twelve games.

From here, the Preds return to Nashville for the home finale on Tuesday night against Calgary, before wrapping up the season with road games at Detroit & Columbus later next week.

Random Observations

• Congratulations go out to Kevin Henderson for scoring a goal in his first NHL game, on a play which featured the combination of a great individual effort by Bobby Butler to create a scoring chance, along with determined digging by Henderson & Chris Mueller to bury the puck.
• Matt Halischuk had his best game of the season, showing up constantly in the middle of the action, whether to score a goal or block a shot.
• Sergie Kostitsyn, on the other hand? Blech.
• I can only imagine how much Barry Trotz will relish the opportunity to hold a full training camp this fall. At times the play in the defensive zone was just awful. Awful, but fixable (such as "both defensemen don't chase guys into the corner").
• Chris Mueller continued his Paul Gaustad imitation, winning 10 of 15 faceoffs.
• Victor Bartley also had a career high with three assists tonight, one on each of Halischuk's goal, followed by a perfect feed to Michal Handzus for Chicago in the third period (oops).

Boxscore - Game Summary - Event Summary

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