The Nashville Predators lost a heartbreaker to the Dallas Stars after the Stars scored twice in the final thirteen seconds to win 3-2. Here is what the team had to say after the loss.
The Nashville Predators lost a heartbreaker to the Dallas Stars after the Stars scored twice in the final thirteen seconds to win 3-2. Here is what the team had to say after the loss.
"It's unfortunate. You get scored on in the last thirty seconds," a frustrated Roman Josi said after today's loss to the Stars.
"We've got to look at what led up to that."
The Predators looked like they might be able to pull out the regulation win over the Dallas Stars Saturday afternoon, up 2-0 at the start of the third period. Evgenii Dadanov scored at 8:22 to make it a one goal game. Former Predator Craig Smith tied the game up with thirteen seconds left in regulation, and then Jane Hakanpää stunned the Predators and Bridgestone Arena by scoring with just two seconds left to secure a regulation win for the Stars.
The third period was a struggle for the Predators who found themselves defending much of the time.
"We knew they would have a push, but it just felt like we couldn't get any O zone going, couldn't get any sustained pressure," Josi said of the third period.
"If you sit back too much against a team like that, they're going to make you pay."
"We definitely wanted to play more in the O zone," Colton Sissons said. "It's easy for teams that are down and really pushing to play a little bit riskier and really aggressive. They took it to us that way."
"They were pushing," Michael McCarron said in his post game comments. "I don't necessarily want to say that we were on our heels trying to just get pucks out and pucks in, but it kind of felt like that a little bit. I don't think that was our intention at all going into the third period. We wanted to stay foot on the gas."
Andrew Brunette spoke about what he saw from the team in the final minutes.
"I actually saw a lot of good things with the goalie out. We lost the battle at the red line. I thought we overextended our shift a little bit, and we got beat in front of the net and that's a recipe usually when it's five on six that is probably not great."
"The last thirteen seconds we lacked a little poise and understanding where we're at," Brunette said. "I thought it was a little bit of panic."
Overall, Brunette felt like there were too many "passengers" in today's game.
"I thought we had too many passengers tonight for whatever reason, which is a little disappointing," Brunette said. "The more you talk about it sometimes I wonder the less they listen, so that was disappointing."
"When we don't have enough guys playing, it's really hard to win in this league. It's really hard for us to win in this league. We didn't have enough guys committed. I wouldn't say 'committed'. I would say maybe focused on the details. It wasn't like we weren't trying. Just our details, our focus was off and good teams when they are that deep will make you pay when you're off."
The team knows they'll need to look at this game for important takeaways.
"There's definitely some lessons to learn," Sissons said. "We've won a lot of tight games on the other side of things, so we'll take our medicine here and move on."
"The next step for our group is to be able to win games against really good teams like that late in the game and find ways to get some sort of points out of those games," McCarron said.
"The next evolution for our team is to find ways to put pressure on them in the third with the lead, be comfortable with still playing our same kind of game, and pushing for that next goal," McCarron continued.
Despite the painful loss, Brunette still feels like the team is learning.
"I'm proud of the group. They've done everything that I've asked, and it's just there's nights like this where we just lose a little bit of that focus. Like I said, it's a learning experience late in the game."
"We're really learning the hard way right now."
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