The Predators improved to 6-6 all-time in a Game 6 situation

1 сообщение / 0 новое
The Predators improved to 6-6 all-time in a Game 6 situation

WINNIPEG [url=http://www.tampabaylightningteamshop.com/authentic-ryan-callahan-jersey]... Ryan Callahan Jersey[/url] , Manitoba (AP) The Vegas Golden Knights are going to the Stanley Cup Final – with a chip on their shoulder.”Everybody on this team has something to prove,” Ryan Reaves said. ”We call ourselves `The Golden Misfits’ for a reason. We’re doing a good job of proving everybody wrong.”Reaves scored the winning goal, Marc-Andre Fleury made 31 saves and the Golden Knights beat the Winnipeg Jets 2-1 on Sunday to wrap up the Western Conference final in five games.”It’s insane,” said defenseman Deryk Engelland, who grabbed the Clarence S. Campbell Bowl after the final buzzer to celebrate with his teammates. ”Your goal is always to make the playoffs. But if I were to guess I would be sitting here doing this right now, you would be a little skeptical at the time.”Alex Tuch also scored for the Knights. They lost Game 1 in Winnipeg before winning four straight to become the first expansion team since the 1968 St. Louis Blues – when the six initial expansion teams were put alone in the West – to get to the final.”It was their time,” Winnipeg captain Blake Wheeler said. ”They’re just playing really well.”Vegas will meet Tampa Bay or Washington in the final. Tampa Bay leads the Eastern final 3-2, with Game 6 set for Monday night in Washington.The Knights, whose jaw-dropping inaugural 109-point campaign included a Pacific Division crown, swept Los Angeles in the first round, and knocked out San Jose in six games in the second.”All those records and everything, it doesn’t mean anything if you’re not the last team standing,” Vegas center Jonathan Marchessault said. ”I think we have a lot of gas left.”Josh Morrissey scored for the Jets, and Connor Hellebuyck made 30 saves.”It’s very difficult to find that positive feeling at this moment,” Jets coach Paul Maurice said.Reaves, the bruising Winnipeg native acquired from Pittsburgh before to the trade deadline in February, snapped a 1-1 tie with 6:39 left in the second period when he tipped Luca Sbisa’s point shot past Hellebuyck. Reeves last goal before Sunday came 3 1/2 months ago while with Pittsburgh.”The guys that weren’t playing, myself included, we stayed ready,” Reaves said. ”We had fun while we were doing it, but we worked hard so when we were called upon we were ready to go.”Fleury stopped 151 of 161 shots in the series, and allowed just six goals the rest of the way after giving up four in the opener.”Everybody’s stepping up at different times [url=http://www.tampabaylightningteamshop.com/authentic-ryan-mcdonagh-jersey]... McDonagh Jersey[/url] ,” Fleury said.Winnipeg got a power play early in the third, but couldn’t muster much of anything. The Knights smothered much of the Jets’ attack for the next 10 minutes, with Hellebuyck having to come up with big stops on William Karlsson and Eric Haula to keep his team within one.The Jets pressed with under 4 minutes to go, with Fleury stopping captain Blake Wheeler on the doorstep, but it wasn’t nearly enough as the Knights closed out their third straight series on the road.The Jets had the NHL’s second-best record with 114 points in the regular season. They advanced to the first conference final in city’s history with a five-game victory over the Minnesota Wild in the opening round before topping the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Nashville Predators in Game 7 on the road.The usual raucous, white-clad crowd at Bell MTS Place were silenced just 5:11 into Game 5 when Tuch jumped on Morrissey’s turnover and fired his sixth past Hellebuyck.The Jets were tentative to start and it got worse after the opener as Vegas dominated the next couple of shifts, forcing some good saves from Hellebuyck before Winnipeg got its feet moving.After being outshot 7-1 in the first 7 minutes, the Jets finally pushed back and turned the tide with the next nine attempts on goal, culminating with Morrissey making amends for his early gaffe with 2:46 left in the period.Bryan Little won a faceoff in the offensive zone straight back to second-year defenseman, who blasted his first career playoff goal past Fleury’s glove.One of Winnipeg’s downfalls in the series through four games was an inability to maintain momentum. The Knights scored within 1:28 of a Jets’ goal in each of the first four games – a crushing 12 seconds after Winnipeg tied Game 3, and an equally gut-wrenching 43 seconds after the Jets knotted Game 4 – but they managed to take the game to the locker rooms tied 1-1.Both teams had chances in the second period before Reaves made it 2-1, with Jets center Mathieu Perrault just missing on a pass from Little that had too much speed.Right after Reaves scored the second playoff goal of his career – and first since 2015 with St. Louis – Winnipeg’s Nikolaj Ehlers rang a shot off the post on Fleury.NOTES: The Jets were an NHL-best 32-7-2 at home in the regular season, but were a pedestrian 5-4 in the playoffs, including losses in four of their last five post-season outings. …. Winnipeg had won a combined 13 straight at home before dropping a 2-1 decision in Game 4 against Nashville.— DENVER (AP) Colorado had speed and youth. Nashville brought experience and know-how.It was plain to see which won out – this time.Mattias Ekholm ignited the offense early with the first goal by a Nashville defenseman in the series, Pekka Rinne stopped 22 shots and the top-seeded Predators advanced to the second round with a 5-0 victory over the Avalanche in Game 6 on Sunday night.Austin Watson , Filip Forsberg , Nick Bonino and Viktor Arvidsson also scored to help the Predators move on to face Winnipeg. They were 3-1-1 against the Jets in the regular season.”I’m very impressed the way (the Avalanche) played. They played very modern hockey, with a lot of speed,” said Rinne, who notched his fourth career postseason shutout as the Predators won the series 4-2. ”Great game. Great team effort. We didn’t give them any life.”Nashville removed any sort of drama with two goals in the opening period and two more in the second to hush the capacity crowd. That’s the sort of game plan the Predators envisioned.”I think that was our best game from start to finish,” Watson said. ”That’s good for us going forward, to be able to take the last game of this series and carry that into how we want to play in the next one.”Andrew Hammond ran out of magic in net [url=http://www.canucksshoponline.com/authentic-christopher-tanev-jersey]Chri... Tanev Jersey[/url] , allowing five goals. The third-string goaltender nicknamed ”Hamburglar” had 44 saves during a Game 5 win in Nashville to extend the series. But he couldn’t turn back a formidable Nashville offense that won a second straight playoff contest in Denver. Before this, the Avalanche hadn’t lost two straight at the Pepsi Center since early December.”It’s disappointing to us and I’m sure it’s disappointing to fans,” Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog said. ”It means a lot to us that they did give us a standing ovation at the end.”Watson tormented Colorado with four goals and seven points in the series. In all, 11 of Nashville’s forwards had at least a point over six games.The one thing missing was contributions from a blue line that tied a franchise record for goals during the regular season. The Predators `D’ was held scoreless until Ekholm’s slap shot at 7:20.Forsberg scored 38 seconds into second to give Nashville a 3-0 lead and completely drain the energy out of the arena. Bonino added another to go with his two assists.The closest Colorado came to scoring on Rinne was in the second period, when Nikita Zadorov sent in a shot, but it was waved off due to goaltender interference on Carl Soderberg.”Every line that went out there took a lot of pride in playing good defense, even at the end with the game 5-0. We still protected the net,” Rinne said. ”Guys wanted to get me that shutout.”It was quite a bounce-back season for Colorado, which boasts one of the youngest teams in the league. The Avalanche went from a 48-point team in 2016-17 to 95 points this season, earning the last playoff spot on the final day of the regular season. The Avs are the first NHL team to post that sort of turnaround from one full season to the next since Pittsburgh also jumped 47 points in 2005-06 (58) to `06-07 (105).”There are a lot of positives for sure,” said Nathan MacKinnon, who was held to one shot Sunday. ”Everybody thought we weren’t going to make it, that we were going to be the odd-team-out in the West. Obviously, it’s nice to prove some people wrong and have a good young team going forward.”In the handshake line after the game, Nashville coach Peter Laviolette had some encouraging words for MacKinnon.”He thought our team was up-and-coming, similar to their team,” MacKinnon recounted. ”Definitely, it’s a good team to be compared to.”Colorado ran into a Predators squad that looked every bit like the team that went to the Stanley Cup Final a season ago and won the Presidents’ Trophy this season. They’re clicking on all cylinders heading into the Winnipeg series.”These guys have been flying around for six games, playing really fast hockey,” Forsberg said. ”We’ve been trying to play as fast as we can as well. If we can bring that speed into the next round that will be good.”NOTES: The Predators improved to 6-6 all-time in a Game 6 situation. … F Colton Sissons had two assists. … RW Ryan Hartman was a scratch after being suspended for Game 5 for a hit on Soderberg. … D P.K. Subban had high praise for MacKinnon: ”My expectations for him as a player is to be a Hall of Famer by the end of his career.”—

Добавить комментарий

Plain text

  • HTML-теги не обрабатываются и показываются как обычный текст
  • Адреса страниц и электронной почты автоматически преобразуются в ссылки.
  • Строки и параграфы переносятся автоматически.
CAPTCHA
Этот вопрос задается для того, чтобы выяснить, являетесь ли Вы человеком или представляете из себя автоматическую спам-рассылку.
CAPTCHA на основе изображений
Введите символы, которые показаны на картинке.