Nashville, TN – Pekka Rinne posted his first shut-out of the season while earning his 6th victory as the Nashville Predators downed the visiting Minnesota Wild, 4-0.
It was Rinne who thwarted the Minnesota attack in the first period to give his team a chance to turn the tables on the Wild for the win.
The Vezina Trophy winning Rinne stopped all 26 shots on goal tonight for another impressive victory in front of the Smashville faithful.
After a scoreless opening period, Mikka Salomaki scored the winning goal just 37 seconds into the second period on a wrist shot that beat Alex Stalock for the 1-0 lead.
Minnesota was without their starting goaltender Devan Dubnyk tonight, so Nashville took advantage of the back-up, Stalock.
Cakkie Yarnkrok then closed out the second period with his wrister at 19:31 and the teams went to intermission with the Preds sitting on a 2-0 lead.
Into the final frame, Craig Smith finally broke through after a frustrating start to the season, when he was parked in front of the net and took a Nick Bonino pass and beat Stalock “top shelf” for the 3-0 lead.
Colton Sissons then scored Wendy’s Frostys for the Nashville faithful when he scored on a backhander and that would be the final score, 4-0.
Filip Forsberg did not play again tonight as he nurses a lower body injury, and more bad news for the Predators as Matt Duchene left the game in the final period with a lower body injury as well.
There’s been no word on Duchen’s status and he’s expected to be “day to day.”
Nashville travels to Tampa Bay for a Saturday night contest before returning home to host the Chicago Blackhawks on Tuesday night at Bridgestone Arena.
Puck drops at 7:00pm.
