The Preds’ opening playoff series against the Vancouver Canucks was close, then it wasn’t, now it’s close again. The yellow banners are out and flying. If you didn’t jump on the bandwagon back in March during the team’s historic points streak, here’s a quick update as the Scene’s preferred sports fandom navigates a precarious playoff position.
The Preds are down 3-2 in a best-of-seven series, setting up elimination games from here on out. Nashville hosts Game Six at Bridgestone Arena on Friday at 6 p.m. Across the river, Morgan Wallen will be pregaming for his second of three concerts at Nissan Stadium. Between them is Chief’s, the Eric Church bar where Wallen was arrested on April 7 for throwing a chair off the roof — he faces three felonies and a misdemeanor. The whole evening will crackle with the supercharged electricity of former NCVC chief Butch Spyridon’s tourism-industrial complex. Broadway should peak around 11 p.m., particularly if the Preds tie the series, a boost not even Spyridon could have summoned.
So who can?
Fair-weather fans can safely join hands with the Loyal Legion
Roman Josi and Filip Forsberg led the team all season and continue to come up with clutch games. They combined for a third-period goal on Tuesday that kept the team alive. Veteran Swede Gustav Nyquist has seemingly been involved in every crucial goal. Career Pred Colton Sissons (also the team bad boy with three stints in the penalty box) and defenseman Ryan McDonagh have scrapped out tight plays in a very physical series. The refs won’t let Michael McCarron fight even though he really wants to. Goaltender Juuse Saros has looked his best in the past two games: Tuesday’s win, when he shut out the Canucks for two periods; and Sunday’s loss, when the Canucks netted two crucial goals in the last two minutes by pulling their goalie and going 6-on-5 (a seemingly unfair maneuver that happens at the end of hockey games).
The Canucks have three players you need to know about and one you don’t. The first is Arturs Silovs, Vancouver’s young Latvian third-string goalie suddenly facing 70 mph wrist shots because his superiors are hurt. Thatcher Demko played one game before exiting with an undisclosed injury and is now irrelevant. (A few days later he was named a finalist for the NHL’s best goalie award.) Silovs lets in goals, and that’s good news for the Preds. Dakota Joshua has laid down massive hits and clutch shots. Nikita Zadorov, a 6-foot-5 Russian defenseman who scores goals, is the Canucks’ dark Josi.
Last home game, catfish rained from the stands. The Bridgestone scoreboard spotter found Taylor Lewan near the glass at some point during the first period. The retired Titans lineman downed his beer on cue, inking the third installment of his famous catfish luge from the 2018 playoffs. Then it became an interesting mix of fratty and heartwarming when his daughter Wynne, ready with her own cup of water, followed her dad’s lead. We last saw Wynne when she was a toddler and Lewan was 50 pounds heavier (“playing shape”).
Ascendant country singer Alli Walker did her own intensely disgusting version of Lewan’s stunt as a set finale between the second and third periods, pouring Bud Light into a catfish carcass — presumably full of offal — then tipping said carcass back into her mouth. The audience responded with lukewarm applause ... as if to say this catfish drinking has gone too far.
Enjoy hometown hockey while it lasts: If the Preds pull this out, the winner faces annihilation at the Canadian hands of the Edmonton Oilers, the NHL’s current superteam.
