The Preds continued their skipping schedule with a stop in Vancouver, hoping to get a win from a Canucks team that played last night.
Nashville opened the scoring with Zach L’Hereux’s first NHL goal — a solid play from right outside the paint — but they weren’t able to build off of that. The Canucks struck back, with an Aatu Räty goal off a faceoff and some more offensive zone time after that.
The Preds finally managed to get some momentum in the second period, but they lost that when Colton Sissons took a roughing penalty at 8:29 and Elias Pettersson (the forward, not the defender, who wasn’t playing tonight) converted on the Canucks’ power play.
Just a few minutes later, the Preds got a chance of their own on the power play when Nils Höglander sent the puck over the glass, and Steven Stamkos managed to elude the defenders to tie the game again, 2-2, at 12:17 of the second.
The Preds then got another stroke of luck when Kiefer Sherwood fanned on a breakaway against his former team, and built on that luck with a great counterattack that ended in a goal for Roman Josi at 14:21.
Vancouver responded strongly, hemming the Preds in and making them work to hold their lead. Unfortunately for them, Conor Garland took a penalty with just over a minute to go, and a great shift by the Preds’ power play set up Stamkos to score again to extend the Preds’ lead before the buzzer sounded.
The Canucks started the third off strongly, and got some help when the puck hit Mark Del Gaizo in the middle of a line change, leading to a call of too many men on the ice. The Preds managed to kill it off, but Vancouver continued to press, and tempers began to heat up as the period continued.
With six minutes to go in the third period, Sherwood made up for his miss earlier by scoring to cut the Canucks’ deficit to one. The Canucks continued to try to get the game back, hemming Nashville in, but with 21 seconds left in the period Gus Nyquist managed to score an empty-netter to seal the game.