Last week, I wrote about the Preds’ record when losing the first game of a series. At a certain point, the expectation of failure becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it’s hard not to look at last night’s game and see that setting in.
I had my analysis mentally outlined already when Rick Tocchet pulled Arturs Silovs for the extra attacker. For the first 57 minutes of the game, the Preds were picking up where they’d left off in the third period of Friday’s game–it had been too little too late then, but today… They were bringing the offense, gaining and keeping the zone, making smart plays through traffic around the net, keeping Silovs moving, showing creativity and tenacity. They were doing a lot of things right.
If you’re just catching up, the Canucks have been forced to turn to their third goalie of the series, with Thatcher Demko out at best week-to-week (and possibly for the season), and Casey DeSmith having experienced a minor injury late in Friday’s game. Silovs looked considerably more comfortable than DeSmith, but the Preds were also more prepared to challenge him.
The Preds had been taking this series back–first slowly, then strongly.
They weren’t fully prepared for the Canucks’ 6v5 attack, much as they’ve struggled to contain the Canucks’ power play. Colton Sissons’s missed empty-netter stung. But the game felt lost, for me watching it and a lot of you watching it as well, from the minute Brock Boeser finished his hat trick and tied it.
It’s possible it felt that way in the locker room, too.
We’ve seen the Predators struggle to respond to adversity in previous years. We’ve seen a bad call or an overturned goal seem to break their spirits, in the regular season and in the playoffs–most memorably in the 2017 Stanley Cup Final, which parts of the Preds’ losses this series have reminded me of–and every year we’ve hoped that this year it’ll be different.
There is almost no roster overlap between 2017 and now. There have been two coaching changes and a general manager change. The players are different, the circumstances are different, the opponent is different, and the stakes are different. This season, the Predators went on a franchise-record 18-game point streak that included both an eight-game and a six-game win streak.
They’re capable of winning three in a row. With the way they’ve played recently in this series at 5v5, if they can just tighten up their special-teams play, they absolutely can still win this series, becoming the first team in franchise history to claw their way back from a 3-1 series deficit. If they can do that, it would be a huge boon for the franchise, even if they get swept in the next round–because next time, they’ll know they can do it.
Of course, that might not happen. Winning three in a row is never easy, especially in the playoffs. Vancouver’s special teams have been elite, its defense has been great even at 5v5, and the margin for error is razor-thin. The Preds’ defensive breakdowns last night came at the worst possible time, and in sequence. They’ll need both luck and skill to pull it off, and getting both at once for 180 straight minutes of hockey is an awful lot to ask.
But they are still in this series, and I’m not calling it until they turn the lights off in Bridgestone for the last time.