Draisaitl Doesn’t Haunt the Nashville Predators This Time
Leon Draisaitl basically should just call himself the new owner of the Nashville Predators franchise. At least until last night. The Predators managed to keep one of the most dangerous players in the league off the scoresheet, a monumental task to be quite frank.
Draisaitl, as usual, was all over the ice skating in the dangerous areas just lurking. Waiting to punch one past Juuse Saros. He had four shots on goal, and there were moments when he just shook his head in disappointment after a great save or broken up pass.
Coming into Monday’s game, Draisaitl had an astounding 35 career points in 22 games against the Nashville Predators, including five game-winning goals and 12 power play goals. Just insane individual domination over another franchise.
On this occasion, the Predators came to play on the defensive end. Despite surrendering the three goals, they played stout at 5v5 even strength. They protected their goaltender and kept Draisaitl to the outside mostly. They also got their sticks into passing lanes and had some pretty effective zone exits, unlike previous games in the losing streak.
Per Emma Lingan of the team’s official website, Head Coach John Hynes gives a bunch of the credit to keeping Draisaitl and his top line in check to the trio of Cody Glass, Nino Niederreiter and Mikael Granlund:
When asked how the #Preds were able to contain Edmonton’s top line (Draisaitl, McDavid, Hyman) in Monday’s OT win, Head Coach John Hynes gave credit to the line of Cody Glass, Nino Niederreiter and Tanner Jeannot. His full comments are below: pic.twitter.com/dbSSOQhkQj
— Emma Lingan (@emma_lingan) December 20, 2022
Draisaitl will probably haunt us again in the future, but it won’t happen during the regular season at least. The season series is over with the Oilers taking two of three by a score margin of 16-11.