Throughout most of the night the Atlanta Thrashers found themselves trailing the Nashville Predators only to catch them from behind. However, in overtime the Predators skated just out of the reach of the Thrashers as Nashville took the extra point in overtime, 4-3.
After a minute and a half of overtime hockey, Ryan Sutter ended the game with a goal, sneaking the puck just through the pads of Atlanta goalie Johan Hedberg. Sutter found himself wide open after sneaking to the blueline and receiving a pass from Shea Weber, who was in the Atlanta zone.
“It was a smart play by [Sutter]. He caught them on a line change,” said Nashville’s head coach Barry Trotz.
Atlanta helped on the play, when both Mathieu Schneider and Brian Little missed oppourtunities to keep the puck in Atlanta’s zone. “Schneider turned the wrong way on it. If he turns the right way and if Little keeps his feet and blasts it through, they wouldn’t have gotten it through,” said Thrashers first-year head coach John Anderson.
But Nashville’s fourth goal wasn’t the most bothersome for Anderson, instead it was the call, or lack thereof, on the Preds’ third goal. “I was more concerned with their third goal. It was clearly a hook on (Ron) Hainsey,” Anderson said when asked about his team’s third and game-tying goal. “We’ve got control of the puck, he gets hooked, it goes right to their guy in front of the net and it goes in. That concerns me a lot when that’s not called. That puts us down, that puts in a bad situation. That can’t be missed, that play can not be missed.”
The play in question saw Atlanta’s Hainsey with the puck before it made it onto the stick of Nashville’s Jerred Smithson. Smithson was able to pass the puck in front to Jason Arnott, who knocked it in past the defenseless Hedberg.
“I don’t want a break, I don’t want a break from the officials. I just want what should be called to be called,” Anderson went on to say. “When it ends up directly in our net because our guy gets hooked taking it off the puck, that upsets me.”
Even with the questionable no-call Atlanta was able to rebound a third time when Nathan Oystrick flipped a no-look pass to Ilya Kovalchuk with 9:30 left in regulation. Oystrick’s pass went from one circle, across the face of the goal and onto Kovalchuk’s stick, sitting open at the other circle. “I knew [Kovalchuk] was somewhere around the net, so I just kind of blindly threw it and luckily it landed on the stick for an empty-net. I saw him out of the corner of my eye, I knew he was around the net,” Oystrick said about the pass.
Oystrick also added his second career goal in as many games to tie the game at two in the second period. A pass from Eric Perrin in the corner from Perrin set up the streaking Oystrick to blast the puck on net, which trickled past Nashville goalie Pekka Rinne.
After a slow start Oystrick now has four points in three games, and is slowly becoming one of the more dependable players on Atlanta’s blueline. “I just think he’s finding his way. He scored a lot of points for us in Chicago,” said Anderson, who has now coached Oystrick for four straight years in both Chicago and now Atlanta. “I think he was working more on his defensive games to start off the year and make sure he wasn’t making any mistakes.”
Oystrick’s game-tying goal came after two of the strangest goals ever seen in one game. The first came from Todd White, who ricocheted a clearing pass from Dan Hamhuis, who stood behind the net, to tie the game at one. Nashville regained the lead when a shot from Scott Nichol went through the net and off the board, for what everyone thought was simply a no-goal. However, after a minute or so the game was stopped and the tape reviewed. The referees changed the call to a goal.
“It was a little weirder than I’ve seen it before. It was a good shot. What are you going to do?” said Anderson. “I’m surprised they let the play go on that long.”
Boral can be reached at jboral@scoreatl.com.
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