It was a goalie duel in the Saddledome tonight, as Juuse Saros and Dustin Wolf both kept the slate blank for the first two periods despite several impressive chances. The breakthrough came well into the third, as Saros allowed the goal and Wolf skated off with a career-first NHL shutout.
The Flames got an opportunity early when Brady Skjei took a roughing penalty at just 1:43, but although they sent all kinds of rubber towards Saros, he held on. The Preds pushed back after that, getting some good looks and earning a penalty of their own when Jonathan Huberdeau cross-checked Roman Josi.
While the power play got pretty much nothing done, the penalty kill got a chance to shine moments later when Colton Sissons — who doesn’t seem to like Alberta much — got called for high-sticking not quite halfway through the period. Cole Smith and Gus Nyquist combined for a pair of great shorthanded chances, but Wolf handled the saves.
The Flames pushed back but weren’t able to score despite some good chances of their own towards the end of their power play. A pair of coincidental roughing penalties between Michael McCarron and Martin Pospisil near the end of the Sissons penalty stalled both teams’ momentum for a while, before they returned to cautiously trading chances. Brayden Pachal and McCarron fought late in the first, which once again seemed to drag the offense back to a crawl.
In the second Calgary slowly gained the upper hand, drawing out their zone time and forcing the Preds to defend — and Saros to work — for extended periods of time. Then the game slowed down again, until Alex Carrier took a holding penalty at 16:14 and Jeremy Lauzon accidentally cleared the puck over the glass just seconds into the penalty kill.
The Preds did a phenomenal job of killing the 5v3, with Josi out for almost the whole time and great work from Saros and the other skaters as well. They finished the period strong and narrowly dodged another penalty early in the third, as Carrier was pushed into Saros’s net during a Flames flurry and helped it off its moorings while he was in the neighborhood.
The Flames continued to press, and finally broke through at 6:37 of the third when Daniil Miromanov scored on a faceoff play. Nashville rallied, with Phil Tomasino drawing a penalty to give the Preds a chance. Saros had to make a spectacular save on a shorthanded 2-on-0, but did, and the Preds weren’t able to generate much of their own with their power play.
As the period wound down, Head Coach Andrew Brunette pulled Saros with two minutes to go, and Blake Coleman’s empty-net goal at 18:51 — off a stolen pass — sealed the game.