The Nashville Predators and the San Jose Sharks meet in NHL action from the O2 Arena on Saturday afternoon.
The Nashville Predators will be looking to start the year with back-to-back wins after opening things up with a 4-1 win over the Sharks in Friday’s matchup.
Kiefer Sherwood opened the scoring for the Predators just over a minute into the game but Tomas Hertl would tie things up at one just 7:35 later. The tie would hold into the second period, where Eeli Tolvanen restored Nashville’s lead just 1:24 into the second and Nino Niederreiter doubled the lead with his first goal as a Predator with just under five minutes to go in the second. The 3-1 lead would hold into the 3rd and for much of the final frame before Matt Duchene iced the win for Nashville with an empty-netter with less than a minute to play.
Juuse Saros got the win in goal for Nashville, stopping 30 of the 31 shots faced in the win while James Reimer ended up with the loss for the Sharks, allowing 3 goals on 28 shots faced in the losing effort.
Nashville is 0-5 in their last 5 games played on no rest and 1-5 in their last 6 games against the Western Conference while the over is 8-2 in their last 10 games overall. San Jose is 1-9 in their last 10 games against the Central division and 8-25 in their last 33 games played on no rest while the under is 4-1-1 in their last 6 Saturday games.
I get the reasoning for backing either side in this game, but I’m firmly on the under in this one. A back-to-back is hard enough as it is, but a back-to-back overseas is going to be tougher with the jetlag and I think we’re just going to see sloppy offense all over the place. San Jose and Nashville also have two of the better backup goaltenders in the NHL (if we should even call them backups) in Kevin Lankinen and Kaapo Kahkonen. I think this is a 5 goal game max, so give me the under here.