Isles fall on road; Devils wallop Wild
NASHVILLE — James Neal and Ryan Johansen each scored a goal and added an assist to lead the Nashville Predators to a 4-2 win over the Islanders on Thursday night.
Ryan Ellis and Austin Watson also scored for Nashville, which has recorded at least one point in the standings in 16 of its last 17 games. Rookie Ryan Pulock and Brock Nelson had the goals for the Islanders, who have lost of four of their last five.
Neal scored the game’s first goal at 9:15 of the opening period. Calle Jarnkrok carried the puck off of the right wall and from the circle, he fed Neal skating through the slot, where he beat Thomas Greiss with a wrist shot on the stick side. Neal was coming off of his first hat trick of the season in Nashville’s win in Edmonton Monday.
Pulock tied it at 1 at 6:02 of the second with a wrist shot from the right point for his first career NHL goal.
John Tavares assisted on the goal, giving the Islander captain his 30th of the season — the sixth time he has reached the mark.
Nashville regained the lead at 8:13 of the second on a power-play goal by Ellis. From the top of the right circle, Ellis fired a slap shot by Greiss on the stick side.
Johansen followed 1:41 later when he lifted a wrist shot under the crossbar from just outside the crease on the right side.
Early in the third, Nelson squeezed a wrist shot from the right circle through Rinne to cut the Nashville lead to one. Watson added an empty net goal with 56.4 seconds remaining to seal the victory for Nashville.
Greiss had 28 saves, while Rinne finished with 20.
DEV I LS 7, W I L D 4: Devante Smith-Pelly, Mike Sislo and Adam Henrique scored two goals apiece and the Devils had their best offensive performance of the season in routing Minnesota in Newark.
Reid Boucher also scored, Tyler Kennedy added a season-high three assists and Keith Kinkaid made 28 saves as the Devils snapped a three-game home losing streak and rebounded from a 7-1 disaster in Anaheim on Monday.
Nino Niederreiter, Jared Spurgeon, Justin Fontaine and Mikko Koivu scored for the Wild, which squandered a chance to move ahead of Colorado into the eighth and final playoff spot i n the Western Conference.
— AP