Imagine you’re back in grade school. It’s gym class, and your teacher picks two captains to choose the teams. I’m betting it’s pretty easy to remember who was picked first. And it’s definitely easy to remember who was picked last. But can you remember the kid who was picked exactly in the middle?
Of course not; nobody can. If he was a book, he’d have been an instruction manual. If he was a car, he’d have been a Hyundai Elantra. And if he was a hockey game, he’d have been the first 55 minutes of this matchup of the Vancouver Canucks and the Nashville Predators. How appropriate that my dinner consisted of a plain turkey sandwich and a glass of water while I watched this game.
- SPOILER: The last five minutes of regulation, and all of overtime were mental madness! So stick around to read about them.
- The Predators opened the scoring in the third minute… or did they? Filip Forsberg tipped a high Anthony Bitetto slapshot to beat Ryan Miller. But Forsberg’s stick - like Charlie Sheen - was deemed unacceptably high, and not allowed to continue. The stick was later found in a pool of tiger blood outside a brothel.
- There was a slight blip in the radar a few minutes later when Jack Skille got two minutes for slashing Forsberg. The penalty kill was good, and made great by the kamikaze Chris Tanev, who threw himself in front of a slapshot, having only recently returned from a slapshot-induced injury. I'm starting to get worried: he's taking more shots than O.J. Simpson in The Naked Gun. Fortunately, they've missed all of his major organs.
- Now, I don’t want to sound like this entire game was devoid of excitement. Each period had its moments. For instance, the first saw not one, but two shots off the post. Just one more and we’re getting into Gordon Bombay territory.
- I had some time to think during the first intermission, and there are three things that bother me about the Nashville Predators. Firstly, I felt uncomfortable watching a bunch of grown men who willingly run around calling themselves predators. Maybe it has something to do with the Kitty Genovese murder case that I watched on Netflix recently. Secondly (and this is really just an extension of firstly), sometimes the announcers would refer to the team as “the Preds,” but there would always be a split-second when it sounded like they said, “The peds.” That’s also not a great association for a bunch of sweat dudes. And thirdly, I learned that the Predators’ mascot is named the Gnash. As a man named Nash (and one-time mascot), you can imagine how this would be infuriating.
- The second period gave us the first real goal of the game, an Austin Watson pirouette that beat a sprawling Ryan Miller. Watson one-timed the stray puck that had bounced off the board behind the net, sent in by a Mike Fisher point shot that went a mile wide.
- The rest of the second period hummed along nicely, with a few penalties in the mix. Troy Stecher went to the box for Trippin’ up Forsberg, and then during that penalty, Nashville’s Ryan Ellis took two minutes for Holdin’ Brandon Sutter. Trippin’ VS Holdin’: as classic a battle on ice as it was on the charts.
- I had some more time to think during the second intermission. Got to thinking about the Predators again. Started doodling on my notepad. Realized that “predators” is an anagram for “teardrops.” Realized I was bored to tears.
- The third period started to pick up a bit. Pekka Rinne made his second armpit save of the night. Then nothing happened. Then 15 minutes went by. THEN EVERYTHING ALL AT ONCE! Forsberg took a Tripping penalty that didn’t amount to much from the Vancouver power play. But it did allow the Canucks to build up enough momentum for a Brandon Sutter game-tying goal. With Miller pulled and the Canucks playing with essentially six forwards, they poured on the pressure and got (North Van native) Colton Sissons to cough up the puck to Sven Baertschi. Baertschi took it from the red line with Sutter following. Baertschi to Sutter, Sutter with the wrist shot through Rinne’s 5-hole. Game tied up with 48 seconds to go.
- This took us to overtime, the turkey sandwiches and Hyundai Elantras long forgotten. Roman Josi scored immediately for Nashville, banking it off the post, then off Miller’s back and in. But the goal was repealed due to Viktor Arvidsson’s Incidental Contact with Ryan Miller. If you didn’t see it, it looked exactly like this:
- Back to the excitement of overtime hockey: big ol’ Matthias Ekholm took a Tripping penalty on Markus Granlund and it looked like Vancouver was in the clear. After all, 4-on-3 for the last two minutes of the game; how could Vancouver not win? I’ll tell ya how. Because Vancouver's big plan for the power play was setting up Troy Stecher for a series of predictable one-timers, all of which got blocked, the last of which let Roman Josi and Calle Jarnkrok go on a joyride breakaway, end-to-end. That’s how. So… they did that. And scored. With one second left on the clock. Y’know when you watch a movie and the hero diffuses the bomb with one second left and you’re like, “Yeah right, buddy. One second? Nice try.” Well yeah, this was that, but in real life.
- All in all, this game ended up with a very exciting finish to a very boring start. Kinda like that middling kid from grade school. Because, believe it or not, he’s an axe murderer now; a bonafide predator.
