Ducks resting up for aggressive Preds
The post-season can be exhausting, and playing four games in seven nights going from an emotional Game 7 to wrap up one series to the Western Conference finals is starting to take a toll on the Anaheim Ducks.
Playing the Nashville Predators inside the NHL’s toughest arena in nearly 20 years sure isn’t helping.
Coach Randy Carlyle said Wednesday that his Ducks just ran out of gas after taking a 1-0 lead Tuesday night in Game 3. The Predators scored twice in the third, not counting two goals waved off for goalie interference, and pulled out a 2-1 victory for a 2-1 lead in the Western finals.
Carlyle said he thought his Ducks were flat with emotion and credited the Predators for taking that out of them. A schedule that had Anaheim starting this series less than 48 hours after ousting Edmonton in a deciding seventh game doesn’t help either.
“You look back and you say, ‘Hey, we played Game 7 a week ago today,”’ Carlyle said Wednesday. “You know, so that’s four games in six nights or seven nights. And then you get more of an understanding of the intensity and the drainage that does take place on your people.”
Then there’s the challenge of playing in Nashville where the Predators just notched their 10th straight playoff win dating to last season.
It’s the NHL’s longest streak since Detroit won 10 straight in 1997-98 after Colorado went 11-0 in 1996-97. The Predators are just the 10th team to win at least 10 straight at home in the playoffs since the NHL expanded in 1967-68. It’s the 15th time an NHL team has ran off 10 consecutive playoff wins at home.
Nashville started this last year against these very same Ducks. Anaheim won the first two games in Nashville by a margin of 7-1 before the Predators won Game 6 in taking the first-round series in seven.
They haven’t lost since, winning the first six at home this post-season despite being the last team in the West into the playoffs as the second wild-card. Game 4 is Thursday night. Ducks forward Jakob Silfverberg said he doesn’t know if it matters right now if the Predators are at home or not because of how aggressively they’re playing. Being at home only means the crowd, which reached 17,338 with standing room, pumps Nashville up even more. Add to that Nashville’s defencemen pinching to keep pucks inside the offensive zone, preventing the Ducks from breaking into their own zone to shoot at Predators goalie Pekka Rinne.
“A lot of times it can be frustrating because maybe you don’t get as much room as you’re used to out there, especially as a winger,” Silfverberg said. “So just a super aggressive team and especially with the crowd in their back, it’s tough sometimes, tough to generate any offence.