Leading by two late in the third period on Thursday night, the Nashville Predators nearly let the game get away. Colton Sissons made sure that did not happen.
After the Predators allowed a pair of goals in the final 4 minutes, 5 seconds of regulation, Sissons scored 3 minutes, 5 seconds into overtime to give them a 4-3 victory over the Vancouver Canucks.
“It was a little bit scary at the end there,” Sissons said. “I thought we played a great game. I’m not sure the score was indicative of the play. I really liked our effort tonight, really all 60 minutes, so it’s stuff we can build off of.”
Ryan Hartman, Nick Bonino and Calle Jarnkrok also scored and Pekka Rinne made 19 saves for the Predators, winners of two straight.
Jay Beagle, Brock Boeser and Bo Horvat scored for the Canucks, who had won three in a row.
Vancouver tied it with 43.5 seconds remaining in the third when Horvat, parked at the far post, slipped one past Rinne. The Canucks were shorthanded at the time and had pulled goalie Anders Nilsson for an extra skater.
In overtime, Bonino sent a pass from the left boards to Sissons skating through the slot and he elevated a shot over Nilsson.
Hartman scored the game’s first goal at 5 minutes, 52 seconds of the opening period.
With the Canucks changing lines, Predators defenseman Dan Hamhuis sent a long pass from inside the Nashville zone to Hartman at the red line.
Skating in on the right side, Hartman used Vancouver defenseman Ben Hutton as a screen and beat Nilsson on the glove side with a wrist shot from above the right circle.
Nashville are still without injured first-line forwards Filip Forsberg and Viktor Arvidsson. In their absence, Hartman has been given top-line minutes with Ryan Johansen and Kevin Fiala.
Bonino made it 2-0 at 8 minutes, 40 seconds of the first with a wrist shot from the left face-off dot that beat Nilsson high to the far side.
Beagle halved the Nashville lead at 15 minutes, 15 seconds of the first.
With the Predators on a power play, Markus Granlund intercepted a pass from Mattias Ekholm in the neutral zone.
Granlund carried the puck into the Nashville zone on the left side. Inside the circle, he sent a pass to Beagle in the slot, where he made a quick forehand-to-backhand move and beat Rinne on the stick side.
Nashville regained their two-goal lead at 11 minutes, 5 seconds of the second when Jarnkrok tipped Kyle Turris’ shot past Nilsson, who finished with 30 saves.
Boeser made it 3-2 at 15 minutes, 55 seconds of the third with a power-play goal.
Rookie sensation Elias Pettersson got the secondary assist on Boeser’s goal, extending his point streak to five games (three goals, eight assists)
In Thursday’s other games, the Columbus Blue Jackets overpowered the Los Angeles Kings 4-1, the Buffalo Sabres beat the Arizona Coyotes 3-1 and the Tampa Bay Lightning crushed the Toronto Maple Leafs 4-1.
The Winnipeg Jets edged the Edmonton Oilers 5-4, the San Jose Sharks edged the Dallas Stars 3-2, the Montreal Canadiens outlasted the Carolina Hurricanes 6-4 and the Minnesota Wild crushed the Florida Panthers 5-1.
Additional reporting by staff writer
TIGHT GAME: The Detroit Pistons, the NBA’s second-best team, barely outlasted the Washington Wizards, who fell to an NBA-worst 1-10 with their ninth consecutive loss Cade Cunningham’s triple double, Daniss Jenkins’ three-pointer at the buzzer and Javonte Green’s overtime dunk lifted Detroit past Washington 137-135 on Monday, stretching the Pistons’ win streak to seven games. In an unexpected thriller, the NBA’s second-best team barely outlasted a Wizards club that fell to an NBA-worst 1-10 with their ninth consecutive loss. “We knew how big this game was for us,” Jenkins said. “We wasn’t going to let nothing stop us from getting this W.” Cunningham made 14-of-45 shots and 16-of-18 free throws for a career-high 46 points, and added 12 rebounds, 11 assists, five steals and two
LIKE FINE WINE: Thirty-eight-year-old Djokovic won his 101st title of his career in Athens, becoming the oldest tournament winner since Ken Roswell, 44, in 1977 Elena Rybakina on Saturday clinched her biggest title since Wimbledon in 2022, defeating world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka 6-3, 7-6 (7/0) at the WTA Finals in Riyadh. The world No. 6 put on yet another serving masterclass and was at her returning best as she became the first Kazakh and the first player representing an Asian country to lift the WTA Finals singles trophy. Having gone 3-0 in round-robin play, Rybakina earned a record US$5.235 million and would finish the year ranked No. 5 in the world. “It’s been an incredible week, I honestly didn’t expect any result, and to go so far,
EMPTY STANDS: Maccabi fans were banned from attending by police, who cited violence and hate crimes when the team played Ajax in Amsterdam last season Aston Villa beat Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv 2-0 on Thursday in a Europa League game played amid heightened security measures, with more than 700 police officers deployed to deal with possible protests. Morgan Rogers put through Ian Maatsen in first-half stoppage time for the defender to score from a tight angle and Villa doubled the lead on the hour with Donyell Malen hitting the bottom corner from the penalty spot. It was Villa’s third win from games in the competition. The game at Villa Park had become the center of a political debate after Maccabi fans were banned from attending, as
An amateur soccer league organized by farmers, students and factory workers in rural China has unexpectedly drawn millions of fans and inspired big cities to form their own, raising hopes China can grow talent from the ground up and finally become a global force. The nation of 1.4 billion people has about 200 million soccer fans, more than any other country, but it has failed to build world-class teams, partly due to a top-down approach where clubs pick players from a very small pool of prescreened candidates. The professional game is marred by a history of fixed matches, corruption, and dismal performances,
RSS