Clarksville, TN – The Nashville Predators had every opportunity to beat the Dallas Stars Saturday night at the American Airlines Center, but couldn’t close the deal during a five on three overtime power play, falling 4-3 in a shoot-out.
Nashville took an early 2-0 lead in the contest when Alexel Emelin opened the scoring just 34 seconds into the game with a bullet from the point to put the Predators on the board first.
Calle Jarnkrok then laced one top shelf over Ben Bishop, with the Predators short-handed, to make it 2-0, and Nashville was off to the races.
Nashville appeared to be in control of the game, but Dallas would close out the first period trailing 2-1 after scoring on the power play. Tyler Sequin took a Jamie Benn pass at 12:13, scoring his 17th goal of the season and that’s how the period would end.
The second period would start with Dallas putting pressure on the Nashville goaltender, Yuuse Saros, who started in place of Pekka Rinne.
Antoine Roussel scored his fifth goal of the season at 10:05 on a rebound from a John Klingberg shot, and Dallas had tied the game, 2-2.
Predator’s coach Peter Laviolette was juggling his lines throughout the game, looking for the right combinations, when Martin Hanzal scored at 13:18 of the second period, and suddenly the Predators were trailing 3-2.
Ryan Johansen would pull Nashville even, scoring his fifth goal of the season on the Predator’s power play to make it 3-3 and that would be the score at the end of regulation.
The key moment in the game came with Nashville on the five on three power play in over-time but unable to seal the deal. Dallas would hold on through the over-time period to send the contest to a shoot-out.
Kevin Fiala would score the only Predator goal in the shoot-out and with Alexander Radulov and Tyler Seguin goals, Dallas would take the contest, 4-3.
Nashville was able to take one point from the contest.
The Predators are now on the Christmas break and will return to action on Wednesday night in St. Louis.
