Cole Smith scored two goals to help the Nashville Predators end a four-game losing streak with a 4-2 win against the visiting Chicago Blackhawks on Saturday afternoon.
Yakov Trenin and Gustav Nyquist also scored, and Kevin Lankinen made 29 saves for the Predators, who had blown three two-goal leads in their past two games.
Philipp Kurashev and Tyler Johnson scored, and Arvid Soderblom made 28 saves for the Blackhawks, who have lost four of five to fall into last place in the Central Division.
Nashville took a 1-0 lead at 12:07 of the first period.
Blackhawks rookie defenseman Kevin Korchinski was trapped in the corner of his zone by Trenin and tried to clear the puck up the wall, but it was intercepted by Nashville forward Colton Sissons.
He fed the puck back to Trenin at the bottom of the right circle and he skated it to the top of the circle before turning and shooting the puck past Soderblom for his first goal of the season.
The Predators extended the lead to 2-0 with a power-play goal at 18:32 of the second.
Gustav had just missed a prime scoring chance from close range when a rebound off Filip Forsberg’s slap shot came to him at the side of the crease and he shot it into the net.
Chicago cut it to 2-1 at 13:05 of the second.
Connor Bedard took a one-timer from the right circle that was saved by Lankinen, but the rebound came out diagonally to the feet of Kurashev and he swiped the puck back into the net.
The Predators regained the two-goal edge before the end of the period when Smith scored at 16:20.
Smith helped win a battle for the puck behind the Chicago net. The puck came out to Philip Tomasino, whose wrist shot from the right circle was saved, but Smith skated in and scored his own rebound to make it 3-1.
Johnson took a shot from the bottom of the right circle that banked off traffic and into the net to cut it to 3-2 at 12:15 of the third.
Smith scored into an empty net with 12 seconds left to make it 4-2.
–Field Level Media
