The Nashville Predators are on a four-game winning streak and occupy the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference as they prepare to host the San Jose Sharks on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
The Predators\u2019 latest win was a 3-2 overtime victory over the host Chicago Blackhawks on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Filip Forsberg had a hand in all three goals with two tallies, including the OT winner, and an assist.<\/p>\n
Nashville (33-28-9, 75 points) is two points ahead of the Los Angeles Kings, its nearest competitor for the last Western Conference playoff position.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to move up,\u201d Predators coach Andrew Brunette said. \u201cWe want to keep moving forward. We don\u2019t want to look back. We\u2019ve been a resilient group that has a lot of belief in ourselves, and we\u2019re just going to keep moving forward. We haven\u2019t dwelled on where we were (in the standings) once all year, even when we were kind of at the bottom looking up. We\u2019re going to keep that same attitude here going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steven Stamkos\u2019 goal midway through the third period tied the contest 2-2.<\/p>\n
He and Forsberg are Nashville\u2019s leading goal scorers. Stamkos has 34 goals this season, while Forsberg has 32. The overtime goal was the 350th of Forsberg\u2019s career.<\/p>\n
Juuse Saros made 27 saves Sunday in his return after missing two games with an upper-body injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, \u2018Juice\u2019 (Saros) was outstanding, and we got out of here with a W,\u201d Brunette said. \u201cI thought both goalies \u2014 I thought Spencer (Blackhawks goalie Spencer Knight) was really good \u2014 especially at different stretches of the game where we put some pucks on him and (had) some pretty good looks. And \u2018Juice\u2019 coming back kind of right where he left off, I thought he was playing as good as I\u2019ve been around him since the Olympics. His game\u2019s at another level, and he showed it again tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sharks (32-30-6, 70 points) have lost four straight games, falling 4-1 to the visiting Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday.<\/p>\n
San Jose, which is five points behind Nashville in the wild-card chase, has been outscored 21-8 during the losing streak.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not so much someone, we just need more guys going. We need more guys going throughout our games,\u201d Sharks coach Ryan Warsofsky said. \u201cWith this time of year, you need your full bench going. You\u2019ve got to fight for every inch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tyler Toffoli, the team\u2019s third-leading scorer with 44 points (18 goals, 26 assists) missed Saturday\u2019s game with an upper-body injury. His status is unknown for Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Macklin Celebrini, who assisted on the Sharks\u2019 goal by defenseman Dmitri Orlov on Sunday, is the team leader with 96 points (35 goals, 61 assists).<\/p>\n
Defenseman Vincent Desharnais also did not play Saturday because of an upper-body injury.<\/p>\n
Desharnais, Igor Chernyshov and goaltender Yaroslav Askarov practiced Monday. Chernyshov has missed four games with a concussion and Askarov six games with a lower-body injury.<\/p>\n
Warsofsky said Desharnais and Chernyshov could possibly play against the Predators.<\/p>\n
It also appears that Askarov will be available because goaltender Laurent Brossoit was sent to San Jose of the American Hockey League on Monday.<\/p>\n
Ryan Reaves did not play after the first period Saturday because of a left-hand injury and is listed as week-to-week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Nashville Predators are on a four-game winning streak and occupy the second wild-card spot in the Western…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5119],"tags":[5,2409,231,5281,4,2410],"class_list":{"0":"post-519426","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nashville-predators","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-nashville","10":"tag-nashville-predators","11":"tag-nashvillepredators","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-predators"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116281686342863812","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}