Pius Suter’s goal with 99 seconds remaining in regulation was the difference as the visiting Vancouver Canucks claimed a 1-0 victory over the Nashville Predators on Friday night and clinched their Western Conference first-round series.
Goaltender Arturs Silovs, Vancouver’s third-string netminder who was making only his third career playoff start and 10th career outing, made 28 saves for his first shutout as the Canucks won the best-of-seven series in six games.
“Everyone battled. Everyone competed. We got the reward,” Silovs said.
Prior to standing strong during a frantic finish, Silovs also came up with especially notable saves on Jason Zucker and Ryan O’Reilly.
“It’s unbelievable. I’m so happy for the kid to come in here, not knowing at all what this was gonna be like and … step up when it mattered. I’m happy for him,” J.T. Miller said.
The Canucks, who won the Pacific Division title in the regular season, will have home-ice advantage when they face the Edmonton Oilers in the Western Conference semifinals.
Winning the series is “another step in our process. We’re going to enjoy the hell out of it tonight — I think we play in two days — and we’ll worry about the next round when it happens,” Miller said. “For us to win the first round after going through the process, the day-to-day, feels good.”
Predators goaltender Juuse Saros stopped 28 shots in arguably his best performance of the series, but it wasn’t enough.
Suter, who was denied on a couple of golden opportunities earlier in the game and was visibly frustrated, finally cracked the goose eggs with overtime looming.
From the end boards, Brock Boeser fired a no-look pass to the front of the net, and Suter converted the one-timer for his second goal of the series.
Nashville was awarded a power play with 33.9 seconds remaining but could not find the equalizer. A couple of chances just missed the net or were blocked.
“Once the dust clears and the hurt stops, I think the players will look back and be pretty proud of what they did and how they did it together,” Predators coach Andrew Brunette said. “Our group was a really tight group. It was a pleasure and I’m very grateful to coach them. They were unselfish, came to work every day. It wasn’t a lack of work ethic or want. It just didn’t go our way.”
It was the second consecutive game of the series with no scoring in the first two periods, in big part due to the close-checking style both clubs used as well as the netminders.
Saros was especially strong starting about midway through the second period. He denied Miller on a second-period rush as well as Suter on the rebound. Saros made a couple of other clutch stops, notably Boeser’s opportunity during an odd-man rush.
The Predators had their chances. Nashville, which failed to score even one power-play goal on home ice during the series, wasted one such opportunity in the second period.
–Field Level Media
