The Preds got off to a wobbly start, as the Sens came out strong and Michael McCarron took a tripping penalty early, but Juuse Saros was on top of it all, and things rapidly improved from there–for a while. Nashville found their feet and started pressing into the Ottawa zone, with McCarron scoring the first of the game at 8:26 on a smart, opportunistic play. A few minutes later, Thomas Chabot took a holding penalty, but the Preds were unable to convert.
Still, they continued to press, and at 16:30 Phil Tomasino got the Preds a second goal. With exactly a minute left in the period, Yakov Trenin put them up by three with a tip of a Dante Fabbro shot. Goalie Mads Søgaard finished the period, but didn’t come back out after intermission.
The second period opened with Josh Norris checking Alex Carrier into the boards in a way that Carrier and his defense partner Jeremy Lauzon didn’t much like, though despite some cross-checking from Carrier a moment later no penalties were called. Saros had to make a trio of sharp saves early, but ended up giving up a goal to a patient Drake Batherson at 5:21.
Ottawa continued their attack, displaying the principle that the best defense is a good offense, and Tim Stützle took advantage of a nice pass from Mathieu Joseph to make it 3-2 just under halfway through the period.
Chabot then took his second penalty of the game, a late knee-on-knee hit on Colton Sissons in the neutral zone. The Preds made a valiant attempt on the power play, but Joonas Korpisalo made some great saves and Roman Josi broke his stick, and it ended as a triumph for the Sens’ goalie.
With Carrier missing from the ice–his last shift had been the one of Batherson’s goal–the Preds shuffled the defense around and continued to give up chances. Brady Tkachuk made it 3-3 at 17:10 with an assist from Norris, and Lauzon finished the period off by taking a slashing penalty. Fortunately for the Preds, Ridly Graig was called for embellishing the slash, putting the teams four-on-four–an iffy call, given that Graig did appear to actually be hurt even after the whistle blew. Cody Glass and Stützle exchanged hostilities as the buzzer to end the period sounded, but the Preds escaped to the intermission with no further incident.
Carrier didn’t return for the third period, either, but McCarron drew a slashing penalty early. Claude Giroux got a shorthanded chance and a follow-up, and the Preds got very little at all. McCarron then took a penalty of his own, and the Preds were tasked to kill that off. Saros was then called for tripping Stützle on the follow-through from a kick save.
Denis Gurianov served Saros’s penalty as the Preds were shorthanded again. The penalty killers and Saros put in some good solid work, including a last-minute showstopper of a save on Vladimir Tarasenko. The Sens continued to press as the period wound down, and a last-minute counterattack almost had Glass scoring a buzzer-beater. Instead, the game headed to overtime.
A missed trip on Gus Nyquist put the Preds at a serious disadvantage early in the extra frame, but they recovered enough for some extended back-and-forth. However, Giroux and Stützle on an odd-man rush finished off the comeback at 3:36.