Nashville, TN – The Nashville Predators won a hard fought battle with their hated rivals, the San Jose Sharks, at Bridgestone Arena, 3-1. The game was peppered with multiple penalties on both teams, and an epic performance in goal from Juuse Saros for the Predators.
These two teams absolutely don’t like each other and it showed tonight. Nashville’s Austin Watson and San Jose’s Evander Kane both received game misconduct penalties for altercations during the second period.
Nashville was called for 39 minutes of penalty time while San Jose spent 33 minutes in the penalty box.
There was no scoring during the first two periods of the game as each team relied on their goalie to keep their team in the game. Martin Jones for San Jose blocked 29 of 32 shots on goal, while Saros fended off 25 of 26.The third period was where all the action was, when Nick Bonino got things started at 4:24 on his power play goal to put the Predators on the board, 1-0.
Ryan Johansen then gave Nashville a two goal cushion at 12:59 with his own power play goal, shoving his own rebound into the net past Jones and Nashville took a 2-0 lead.
The Sharks would break through at 18:02 when Timo Meier batted the puck into the net after it had popped up into the air on a rebound from a Tomas Hertl shot on net, and the score was 2-1.
San Jose had pulled their goalie for the man advantage when Callie Jarnkrok grabbed the puck in the San Jose offensive zone and zeroed in the empty netter for the final score, 3-1.
The Predators have now won two in a row and will host their Winter Classic opponents the Dallas Stars on Saturday night. The puck drops for this affair at 5:30pm in Nashville.