Erik Haula scored the lone Nashville goal as the Predators fell to the Utah Mammoth by a 4-1 final on Thursday night at Delta Center. The final road game of the regular season sees the Preds finish their five-game trip out West with seven of a possible 10 points.<\/p>\n
The Predators certainly had their chances, and they outshot the Mammoth by a 30-27 count, but Utah capitalized on their opportunities to hand Nashville their first and only regulation loss in the month of April thus far.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a tough one,\u201d Preds Alternate Captain Ryan O\u2019Reilly said. \u201cI don’t think we played our best tonight. We didn’t play that playoff style that we’ve been having success with – taking care of the puck. Just a lot of fighting it to make plays, and we\u2019ve just got to simplify\u2026 We kind of had a little momentum there, and didn’t capitalize on it, which maybe could have sparked us. We didn\u2019t build the game the way we needed to.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThought that was a pretty good hockey game, and obviously if we pushed there a little bit in the second period we might still get rewarded, and then [their] third [goal early in the third period] hurt, so put us behind the eight ball a little bit,\u201d Preds Head Coach Andrew Brunette said. \u201cI thought the mindset wasn’t quite right to start the game. Thought we turned too many pucks over, and kind of left pucks in bad areas that kind of fed their transition or their o-zone time. But, I thought a lot of good things tonight.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Mammoth had a 1-0 lead through 20 minutes of play, and they doubled that advantage through the second stanza despite the Preds outshooting Utah by a 19-15 count after two periods.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the final frame, the Mammoth quickly took a 4-0 lead before Haula\u2019s goal came on the power play to get the Preds on the board. But, on a night where they had to play without Captain Roman Josi due to an upper-body injury, the visitors were unable to add to their point totals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously [Josi is] the soul of our team, and we all know how amazing a player he is, but we all have to collectively be better,\u201d O\u2019Reilly said. \u201cWhen you have something like that, you\u2019ve got to play much smarter, a tighter game than we did tonight. We made it a little too easy on them, and let their best players feel the puck too much. When you do that, they’re going to make you pay.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, with just three games remaining in the regular season, the Preds will head back to Tennessee for one last homestand beginning Saturday against Minnesota – and they know they\u2019ll need to get back into the win column with the race continuing to tighten.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to get the next one,\u201d O\u2019Reilly said. \u201cThat’s just the most important game of the year. This one, obviously we’re upset about, but we don’t have time to dwell on it. We have to make the adjustments, get back to us, and get ready to win another hockey game.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a heck of a road trip and are playing good hockey,\u201d Brunette said. \u201cEven tonight, they did enough to at least get something out of this game. Unfortunately, we didn’t, and the mindset is we need to get something on Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Notes:\u00a0<\/p>\n
Josi was a late scratch and is day-to-day with an upper-body injury. Jordan Oesterle took Josi\u2019s spot in the lineup for his first NHL game of the season. Defenseman Nic Hague (upper-body, day-to-day) did not play, and Ozzy Wiesblatt was a healthy scratch.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With their final roadtrip of the season now complete, the Preds will return to Nashville for one last three-game homestand that begins on Saturday afternoon when the Minnesota Wild visit Bridgestone Arena.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Erik Haula scored the lone Nashville goal as the Predators fell to the Utah Mammoth by a 4-1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5,4,51,5290,232,5291,5289],"class_list":{"0":"post-549373","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-utah-hockey-club","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-utah","11":"tag-utah-hc","12":"tag-utah-hockey-club","13":"tag-utahhc","14":"tag-utahhockeyclub"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116379266923777038","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549373","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=549373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}