The Nashville Predators embraced every bit of their chase for the franchise’s first Presidents’ Trophy right down to captain Roman Josi grabbing hold with his left hand during their pregame ceremony.
Now it’s time to chase the hardware the Predators really want: The Stanley Cup.
”It’s definitely a good regular season for us www.jetsauthorizedshops.com/authentic-trenton-cannon-jersey , definitely something we can be proud of,” Josi said. ”But now the real work and the real fun starts.”
Filip Forsberg scored three goals for Nashville’s first hat trick of the season, and the Predators finished off the best regular season in franchise history by beating the Columbus Blue Jackets 4-2 Saturday night.
The Predators accepted the Presidents’ Trophy before the game from NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly and took a moment to remember the moment with a team photo on the ice. Fans then chanted ”We want the Cup” for the defending Western Conference champs who lost the Stanley Cup in six games to Pittsburgh last June.
The Predators will begin their run for the Cup against the Colorado Avalanche.
Nashville coach Peter Laviolette said he’d never coached a team that won the Presidents’ Trophy before. This night was to remember all the personal milestones, including David Poile notching the most NHL games by a general manager.
”It was nice to take a minute just to acknowledge that,” Laviolette said. ”Our guys are proud of it. They worked really hard this year. They stayed focused for the entire year. It’s all been part of a vision of something bigger than what happened tonight.”
Nashville followed up the trophy presentation by winning its franchise-record 53rd game this season to finish with 117 points.
Goalie Pekka Rinne made 22 saves through two periods before being replaced by Juuse Saros. Rinne finished 42-13-4 this season.
Austin Watson also scored for Nashville, which goes into the postseason having won two straight.
Josh Anderson and Brandon Dubinsky scored for Columbus.
Losing helped Columbus avoid opening the playoffs against Pittsburgh for a second straight year and instead put the Blue Jackets into a first-round series with Washington.
Coach John Tortorella scratched nine Blue Jackets including captain Nick Foligno and defenseman Seth Jones, and also rested goalie Sergei Bobrovsky with Joonas Korpisalo in net. Tortorella is giving the Blue Jackets the day off Sunday.
”I’ve got some decisions to make,” Tortorella said of playing Washington. ”I have a pretty good idea of what I think the starting lineup will be in our first playoff game, but I’ve got decision to make in case we’ve got injuries.”
The Predators scored three goals in the first period with Watson starting the scoring at 7:52 of the first and Forsberg adding a pair on the power play.
Forsberg scored on a snap shot at 11:04. Then he got his 26th goal of the season just before the buzzer for a 3-0 lead with a shot from the right circle that went off the post and then Korpisalo into the net. Officials reviewed the play, which crossed at 0.4 seconds before the end of the period.
With Korpisalo pulled, Forsberg got the hat trick with an empty-net goal with 39.4 seconds left as fans celebrated by tossing the giveaway visors onto the ice.
Forsberg tied his career high with 64 points and also became Nashville’s scoring leader for the regular season with Viktor Arvidsson (61 points) scratched.
Anderson got his 19th goal at 7:55 of the second Tracy Walker Color Rush Jersey , and Dubinsky pulled Columbus within 3-2 with a short-handed goal at 7:20 of the third.
”We played a pretty good game,” Dubinsky said. ”Obviously, we gave a couple power-play goals to them there in the first, got down 3-0 to a really good team.”
NOTES: Defenseman P.K. Subban played his 82nd game, the only player on the Nashville roster to play every game this season. … The Predators improved to 41-4-6 when scoring first and 23-4-4 when leading after one period. … The Predators sold out their 102nd straight game with a franchise record 17,594.
UP NEXT
Blue Jackets: Face Washington in the first round of the playoffs.
Predators: Hosting Colorado in Game 1 likely Thursday.
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Winner stays.
That’s the norm on the playground, where a team playing pickup ball remains on the court until it is beaten.
And that’s the way Ice Cube insisted it had to be in the BIG3.
Win a championship, come back the next season with the team intact to defend the title.
”To me it goes back to the essence of 3-on-3, king of the court mentality,” Cube said.
The question is whether it’s fair to Trilogy, the undefeated champion from the inaugural season of the entertainer’s 3-on-3 league of former NBA players.
It wouldn’t work in major professional sports. But in the BIG3 Malik Jefferson Color Rush Jersey , back come Kenyon Martin, Al Harrington, Rashad McCants, James White and Dion Glover, who guaranteed themselves a job for this year by winning the title. They have the chance to defend their title against rivals that have bolstered by an influx of former NBA champions, All-Stars or Olympic gold medalists.
”We are at a disadvantage because we have kind of been exposed to what we have and what we’re capable of, going 10-0, so everybody’s done their homework,” said the 33-year-old McCants. ”They know who we are. There’s a scouting report now, so it’s going to be a lot more difficult this year than it was last year.”
All the players in the league – other than those on Trilogy – who weren’t captains or co-captains went back into this year’s draft pool, with no promise of getting picked with the added talent that was available this year: Amare Stoudemire Authentic John Tavares Jersey , Ron Artest, Carlos Boozer, Baron Davis and Nate Robinson signed on. It is unclear what players’ salaries are; the league has not publicly disclosed that information.
The only move for Triology coach Rick Mahorn was the addition of Dahntay Jones when rosters were expanded to six players. The 6-foot-4 McCants, last year’s No. 1 overall pick and leading scorer in the championship game, was promoted to a co-captain.
Cube doesn’t know if job security for the winners was a motivating factor for players who came aboard when he founded his league with entertainment executive Jeff Kwatinetz. McCants, who played four years in the NBA, a few more overseas and knows how hard it is to have a career playing basketball, takes pride in the gimmick even while acknowledging that it doesn’t work in his team’s favor.
”It’s a refreshing aspect to the league where you have bragging rights to say, `Hey, you guys got to go back into the combine and go through the draft all over again because you didn’t win, and the winners prevail www.eaglesauthorizedshops.com/authentic-richard-rodgers-jersey ,”’ he said.
And then in pro sports sometimes they then break up practically the moment the victory celebration is over. Free agency is a benefit for players but at times a detriment to teams.
”We felt like fans are weary of, you get behind a team, they win it, and you don’t know if that same team is going to come back or not,” Cube said. ”You don’t know who’s going to leave, and I just think fans are sick of that. So to me, fans are not really getting into teams as much as they’re getting into players. So that’s the reason why I think there has to be a happy medium between what exists now in sports, which is free agency kind of run rampant, and a balance of what the fans really want.
”So there’s got to be something, so in our league we just eliminate that.”
Cube envisions a 12-team league playing twice a week in NBA arenas next season if the BIG3, trying to capitalize on the popularity of 3-on-3 Bradley Zimmer Cleveland Indians Jersey , which debuts in the Olympics in 2020 – is successful. That would make even more teams to beat for whoever wins this season’s title. But he believes not changing up the champ is the best approach.
”Like yo, if you win it, you’re the champion, there’s no reason for you to make any changes,” he said. ”And the rest of the league has a measuring stick to draft because everybody goes back to the draft pool pretty much if you don’t win the championship, so you have to reorganize your thinking of your team to figure out how to beat this standard. So it just, to me, works better.”
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