Barry Trotz wasted little time regrouping his troops.
Two goals down, five minutes in, the Nashville Predators head coach called a timeout, switched his goaltender and gave his team the kick in the butt they needed to turn a 2-0 deficit into a 6-3 victory over the Edmonton Oilers last night at Rexall Place.
"We had just played back-to-back games and had a long day of travel, and we didn't have any legs at the beginning," said Trotz.
"So I told them that the next goal would mean everything and that we needed to go after it, which we did. Our fourth line was able to get a big goal for us, which got us back skating again."
Predators goaltender Pekka Rinne, who seems to play well against everybody except the Oilers lately, gave up two goals on the first four shots he faced as Robert Nilsson, on a strong individual effort, and Lubomir Visnovsky, on a rebound in front, put the visitors down early. In their first encounter this season, Rinne gave up four goals on nine shots in a 6-1 loss.
"We couldn't give them a third goal," said Trotz.
"We'd be talking about a different thing tonight if they had gotten a third goal.
"Once we made it 2-1, we started believing a little bit and started playing a little bit more like we know we can."
"We came out of the blocks extremely slow, we really didn't give Pekka much help," said Predators centre Jared Smithson, who capped the scoring on the night.
"We came with some jump after the timeout and even though we still got into some penalty trouble, we were happy to be able to pull out the two points."
DEREK.VANDIEST@SUNMEDIA.CA
