Roman Josi had a goal and two assists and Ryan Johansen scored two of Nashville’s three power-play goals in the first period en route to his first career NHL hat trick as the host Predators rolled over the Minnesota Wild 6-2 on Tuesday night.
Philip Tomasino also had a goal and two assists, Matt Duchene had a goal and an assist, Filip Forsberg had three assists and Mattias Ekholm added two assists for Nashville (40-25-4, 84 points), which remained in the first wild-card spot in the Western Conference.
Juuse Saros made 47 saves for his 34th victory of the season.
Kirill Kaprizov and Mats Zuccarello each had a goal and an assist for Minnesota (43-21-5, 91 points), which had a 10-game point streak (9-0-1) snapped.
The chippy first period featured 42 combined penalty minutes and three fights as Nashville took a 3-1 lead thanks to the three power-play scores.
Josi made it 1-0 at the 5:10 mark with his 19th goal of the season, firing a wrist shot from the left circle past a screen by Nick Cousins screen and Marc Andre-Fleury’s glove side.
Zuccarello, left alone in the slot, tied it with his 21st goal of the season with a wrist shot past Saros’ blocker side.
But Nashville regained the lead just 25 seconds later on a nifty tic-tac-toe play that Johansen finished with a deflection into an open right side of the net off a Forsberg pass.
Johansen then made it 3-1 with 57 seconds left in the period with the Predators’ third straight power-play score, redirecting Josi’s point shot.
Tomasino made it 4-1 at the 6:06 mark of the second period with his 11th goal of the season, one-timing a Josi pass from the slot just five seconds after Minnesota killed a Matt Dumba interference penalty.
The Wild closed to 4-2 near the end of the period when they converted a 5-on-3 advantage when Kaprizov ripped in a rebound of his own shot from the high slot.
Duchene then sealed it with his 36th goal of the season with 6:32 to go when he snapped a wrist shot from the top of the right circle over Fleury’s right shoulder and into the top far corner.
Johansen added an empty-netter with 6.1 seconds left to garner the hat trick with his 20th goal of the season.
–Field Level Media