Coming off a five-day break in between games, the Nashville Predators were hoping to take advantage of a rare opportunity in front of them on Thursday night at the TD Garden playing the Boston Bruins.
Nashville's last game was last Saturday night in a 5- 2 win over the St. Louis Blues at home to improve to 3-2-3 on the young season. In the midst of eight of 10 games at home, the Predators began a two-game road trip on Thursday night against a Boston team coming off a four-game West Coast road trip that saw the Black and Gold go 3-0-1.
A team coming off a road trip like the Bruins had sometimes faced the toughest game of the season for a head coach. That's what Marco Sturm and his staff were facing against the Predators. However, an early Thursday morning message to his team was clear as day.
Boston avoided any thoughts of a slow start with a fast start, and they sent an early message to the Predators that they were not messing around. Unfortunately for Nashville and head coach Andrew Brunette, his team failed to show up and looked like a team coming off a long road trip.
“We need a few more guys playing hockey,” Brunette said, per Brooks Bratten of NashvillePredators.com. “We had too many passengers tonight, and probably almost all of them. It’s disappointing. We knew coming in [that] it's a big stretch of hockey, a big month for our group. We knew that, and we just forgot to play hockey tonight.”
Bruins bury Predators with two-goal periods in rout of Nashville
The Bruins put to rest any early thoughts of a flat home game with two goals in each period in a 6-0 Black and Gold victory. Casey Mittlestadt opened the scoring just over three minutes into the game, and then an Elias Lindholm power-play goal at the end of the period doubled the lead.
David Pastrnak, JJ Peterka, Mark Kastelic, and Pastrnak again allowed Boston to pull away behind a shutout performance from Michael DiPietro. As for Nashville, they haven't played badly early in the season and had an opportunity for a big road victory on Thursday night, but the Bruins made sure it wasn't meant to be.
There was a shot mentality from the opening faceoff for Sturm's team, and they put together a solid 60-minute performance. Heck, they didn't even take their first penalty until the third period, with the game basically over.
As for the Predators and Brunette, they head to Pittsburgh to face the Penguins on Saturday night before returning home for five straight games. Maybe Nashville's head coach will have fewer passengers than he had on Thursday night in Boston. However, for one night, the Bruins were the ones in cruise control for 60 minutes.
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