RINNE QUACKS UP AS DUCKS FIND WAY BACK INTO SERIES
Lots of goals and suspect goaltending help Anaheim recover from another 2-0 deficit
It was somewhat humorous
— and a tad premature — when a reporter asked Anaheim Ducks head coach Randy Carlyle if Sunday’s game against the Nashville Predators was of the must-win variety.
After all, this was Game 2 of a best-of-seven series. And besides, Anaheim lost its opening two games at home against the Edmonton Oilers only to come back and win in seven games — not that anyone with the Ducks wanted to repeat that scenario.
“Obviously, that’s common sense,” Carlyle said. “But again, it’s all about trying to get better than we were in the last game.” Well, that’s up for debate. Certainly the start of the game wasn’t any better than in the previous game. But thanks to some spotty goaltending, a wild second period and another timely goal from Nick Ritchie, the Ducks defeated the Predators 5-3 at the Honda Center and head to Nashville tied 1-1 in the Western Conference final.
This was a game where the goalies finally took mercy on the shooters. Nashville’s Pekka Rinne, who fought the puck all night, allowed four goals for the first time in the playoffs. Anaheim’s John Gibson played like he was breaking in new skates.
“Personally, I’ve got to be better moving forward,” Rinne said.
“A few of the goals they crashed the net — good plays — but they just ended up going in. It’s tough to explain … obviously disappointed personally.”
Fans were treated to a wild back-and-forth game where every shot was a scoring chance and no lead was safe. Nashville took a 1-0 lead at 4:18 in the first when Viktor Arvidsson sprung Ryan Johansen on a breakaway.
A couple of minutes later, Ritchie took an interference penalty for a late hit and Nashville made it 2-0 when Johansen found James Neal for what was likely one of the easiest goals he has scored.
Once again, the Ducks dug a hole. But, as they had done time and time again, they dug themselves out, and for the fourth time of these playoffs won a game where they had trailed 2-0.
Rinne, who entered the game with a .950 save percentage, is unlikely to play this shaky again.
Unless Anaheim figures out a way to shut down Nashville’s top line, this will be a short series.
With every game in the playoffs, the Preds look more and more dangerous. Neal, who scored the OT winner in Game 1, has four goals in his last five games. Johansen, who had two assists in Game 1, had a goal and an assist in Game 2.
But it was Arvidsson who gave Anaheim the most trouble. The 24-year-old, who came out of nowhere this year to score 31 goals and 61 points, had just one assist in his last seven games.
In Game 2, he broke out in a big way. Arvidsson made an Erik Karlsson-like backhand pass over a cluster of defenders on Johansen’s breakaway goal. He blinded Gibson with a textbook screen on the second goal. On the third goal, Arvidsson sped up the ice and sold Gibson on a shot before attempting a wraparound that Filip Forsberg finished off.
That the Johansen line has combined for three goals and eight points in two games on the road, where they have seen a steady diet of slashes and hacks from Ryan Kesler and the Ducks’ shutdown line, has been more impressive. With the series heading to Nashville, where the Predators are 5-0 at home, look for Johansen to get a much-needed break from his pesky shadow.
“I mean he just blows my mind,” Johansen, who took a high-sticking penalty on Kesler, said of the Anaheim centre. “I don’t know how you cheer for a guy like that. It just doesn’t make sense how he plays the game, so I’m just trying to go out there and play hockey and it sucks when you gotta pull a stick out of your groin every shift.”
While the Predators have had no trouble scoring goals, preventing them has not been quite as easy. It was 39 seconds into the second period when Johansen temporarily lost his man at the side of the net, allowing Jakob Silfverberg to tie the game with his ninth goal of the playoffs.
Anaheim, which trailed 2-0 and then 3-2 after Forsberg’s goal, tied things up when Ondrej Kase snuck a shot that banked in off Rinne’s pads and trickled over the line. Ritchie then gave the Ducks their first lead of the series on an eye-level slapshot. Game 3 is in Nashville Tuesday. And no, it’s not a must-win, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t once again important.