Nashville Predators: How Tired Were They?

The Nashville Predators played the longest game in their history against the San Jose Sharks, winning 4-3.

If you are like we are and stayed up watching the entire game, it ended after 1:00 in the morning.  We weren’t able to get right to sleep with the adrenaline still coursing through our veins and the alarm seemed to come shortly after our heads hit the pillow. It has been a day of scratchy eyes and a foggy brain, but oh so worth it!

Granted, we expended a lot of nervous energy and yelling during the game, but if we are feeling like this, just think what the players felt like during the game.

There are some interesting things to think about with the game going that long.  It lasted longer than 111 minutes and started in one day and ended in the next in Nashville.  That is about 1.85 games of hockey played all at once.

The game was the longest in Nashville Predators history at 111 minutes and 12 seconds.  That beat last year’s playoff  game against the Chicago Blackhawks which lasted 101 minutes.

The Predators consumed bananas and grapes to refuel during intermissions. Fans resorted to chewing their fingernails. Adam Vingan, Tennessean

It also moved into a tie for 28th for the longest games ever played in the National Hockey league. Just so you know the longest game in NHL History was a 1-0 game between the Detroit Red Wings and Montreal Maroons in 1936  that went into six overtimes.

But how did the players make it through almost two complete games?  Adam Vingan of the Tennessean reported in this article about how the players made it through:

"The Predators consumed bananas and grapes to refuel during intermissions. Fans resorted to chewing their fingernails."

Just how long did some of the player play?  We take a look at their total Time on Ice (TOI):

Keep in mind that the LONGEST average TOI in the NHL is around 30 minutes and 33 shifts for a defenseman and around 24 minutes and 30 shifts for a forward.

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Roman Josi

and

Shea Weber

were just under 50 minutes and Weber and

Mattias Ekholm

had just under 60 shifts!  Weber served four minutes of penalty time or he would likely have been over 50 minutes.

James Neal

and

Mike Fisher

were both over 50 shifts and a little under 40 minutes of ice time. And don’t forget that

Pekka Rinne

played all 111 minutes and didn’t lack for energy.

You could tell that the Predators were getting tired late in the game and that possibly the seven-game first series was wearing on them.  The Sharks seemed to have a little more jump at the end of the second and into the third period. You could tell the Preds players mindset by this quote by Pekka Rinne to Vingan in that same article:

"“I don’t care how these wins come if we have to play all night,” said Predators goaltender Pekka Rinne, who was resoundingly credited by his teammates for his 44 saves, including 25 in overtime."

The Predators showed how rubber legged they were in this video that’s gone viral when they tried to jump over the boards in victory after the winning goal:

They were able to regain their footing and join Fisher with raised arms to celebrate the goal.  That was early this morning.  Today, both teams board a plane and fly halfway across the country to play another game tomorrow.  They will all be hoping that game doesn’t go into overtime.

We leave you with a tweet from one of our favorite PredLine fans.  He and his son Cal had a fang-tastic time at the game but by the time they made it home it looks like Cal felt like the rest of us:

Next: What a Preds Celebration!

Let’s do it all over again tomorrow night, shall we?  The game will actually be starting on West Coast time so it starts at 9:00 Central.  We’re happy that last night’s game was at home.  Go Preds!