IT’S A COUP DE ’VILLE AS PREDATORS ADVANCE TO THEIR FIRST CUP FINAL
There is a car, or what used to be car, painted in Anaheim Ducks colours and parked outside Bridgestone Arena. All series long, fans have been paying $10 for the chance to swing a sledgehammer at it. Pay $20 and they’ll let you take three swings and even throw in a cowboy hat.
It’s a heck of a deal, and it’s so very Nashville — they did the same thing in the first two rounds of the playoffs.
As Ducks head coach Randy Carlyle said last week, “you see these elderly women out there with a sledgehammer taking a pounding at a car that’s got a Ducks logo on it … those are the kinds of things you look to, that passion that’s been developed in their market.”
By Game 6, the rent-a-wreck was missing its hood and looked like it was made of tin foil. The Ducks weren’t faring any better. That’s sort of how the series had gone: With every game, the Predators kept pounding away and applying more dents on their opponent until finally the Ducks caved in.
Colton Sissons scored a hat trick, including the gamewinning goal with exactly six minutes remaining in the third period. But it was goalie Pekka Rinne, who stopped 38 of 41 shots, who was mostly responsible for the 6-3 series-clinching win on Monday.
With the victory, the Predators won the Western Conference final 4-2. They now wait to see whether they will play Pittsburgh or Ottawa in their first Stanley Cup final. Either way, hold onto your cowboy hats, hockey fans — the Stanley Cup final is coming to Smashville.
Before the opening faceoff, Nashville’s Ryan Johansen and Kevin Fiala, both out of the playoffs with injuries, got the crowd going by waving yellow rally towels from inside the stands.
It had the desired effect. Less than two minutes into the game, Nashville jumped out to a 1-0 lead when Austin Watson, who went without a goal in the first two rounds, banked a wrist shot in off an Anaheim defenceman’s skate for his third goal of the series.
The Predators didn’t let up. On their third shot of the night, Sissons took a pass on a three-on-two and beat Jonathan Bernier cleanly with a wrist shot to make it 2-0.
That Bernier was even in the net spoke to how banged up the Ducks were. The team was missing starting goalie John Gibson, who left Game 5 with a lowerbody injury, as well as forward Rickard Rakell for the second straight game.
To make matters worse, firstline winger Nick Ritchie was ejected late in the first period after hitting Viktor Arvidsson into the boards from behind.
Nashville was also missing key players, including captain Mike Fisher. But playing at home, where the Predators had lost only three times in the playoffs in the last two years, they had the so-called seventh man back in their corner.
Decked out in yellow, the soldout crowd spent the entire game alternating between standing up to cheer and breaking out into European soccer chants. After each Nashville goal, they went through the same sequence of jeering Bernier’s name, shouting, “You suck!” and then, “It’s all your fault! It’s all your fault!”
Outside, there might have been even more fans. And yet the Predators at times struggled to feed off the energy.
The first period ended with Nashville leading 2-0, but the ice wasn’t as tilted as the scoreboard made it seem. Anaheim refused to go down quietly. In fact, the Ducks actually outshot the Predators 12-4 in the first period, 13-4 in the second and finished the game with a 41-18 margin.
The Ducks were pressing in the second period, and Anaheim was rewarded for their effort as Ryan Getzlaf found Ondrej Kase in front of the net to make it 2-1. They should have had more, but it was that one-sided of a game. Rinne, who has been the best goalie in the playoffs, once again put on a spectacular show.
Shortly after making yet another huge save, the Predators skated the other way and Sissons, who was the hero of Game 5, banged in a rebound for his second goal of the playoffs. But just as shovels of dirt were being tossed onto the Ducks’ season, the team found new life.
Two minutes after Sissons’s second goal, Anaheim’s Chris Wagner banked a shot in off Rinne’s mask to make it 3-2. Four minutes later, with Corey Perry practically pulling Rinne to the ice in front, defenceman Cam Fowler tied the game on a point shot.
Anaheim had a chance to complete the comeback when Nashville took a delay-of-game penalty. Instead, Rinne stood tall and, three seconds after the penalty expired, Sissons scored the game-winner. Filip Forsberg and Watson then drove the final nails into the coffin with a pair of empty-net goals.
As the clock ticked down, fans began shouting, “We want the Cup.” They will get their chance soon enough.
The sold-out crowd spent the entire game alternating between cheering and breaking out into soccer chants.