Before the NHL takes a two week hiatus for the 4 Nations tournament the Nashville Predators ended their six-game losing skid against the Buffalo Sabres winning 6-4.
Forward Ryan O’Reilly had a superb night posting his first career four-assist performance. He found defenseman Brady Skjei and forward Filip Forsberg for of both of their goals tonight.
“Guys made some great shots, I don’t think this year I’ve contributed the way I’ve wanted to offensively so It’s nice to get on the board like that. It helps your confidence going into the break,” O’Reilly said.
“I thought he took it to another level tonight and put the team on his back and made some big plays at big times, his line especially,” head coach Andrew Brunette said of O’Reilly.
Skjei hadn’t scored twice in a game since March 3, 2024. It’s the fourth time he’s had a multi-goal effort in his decade-long career.
“If there’s room there I like to try and find it and [O’Reilly] did a good job of finding me a couple of times there,” Skjei said. “As defensemen sometimes you get those looks where you might have over backchecked and it allows us to get up in the play to find that soft area. I was lucky enough to find that a couple of times.”
Nashville took the lead to kick off the win as forward Tommy Novak found the back of the net. Kemell was with Novak on the rush and goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen failed to make the stop.
With his goal, Novak is got up to 10 points in his last 14 games. He had nine points in his first 37 games of the season.
Nashville continued to get into a rhythm as O’Reilly found Skjei breaking in on the rush to extend their lead to 2-0 halfway through the opening frame.
The Sabres didn’t exit the first quietly as forward Jason Zucker found defenseman Bowen Byram for his seventh of the season. Then Sabres captain Rasmus Dahlin beat goalie Justus Anunnen with 1:35 to play in the first period to even the score at 2-2.
Buffalo won a corner battle then Zach Benson fed Dahlin a pass in wide open space to walk in on Annunen.
Nashville and Buffalo continued to trade hits while trying to find the back of the net. One fracas in front of Luukkonen led to offsetting roughing calls on Michael McCarron and Dennis Gilbert.
Then Nashville converted on a powerplay to make it 3-2 as Filip Forsberg scored his 20th goal of the season–his seventh on the powerplay–as O’Reilly redirected Josi’s shot from the blue line.
Just 42 seconds later O’Reilly tacked on his third assist of the night finding Skjei for his second goal to make it 4-2.
Before the second stanza came to a close Sabres forward Alex Tuch rifled a shot in to cut down Buffalo’s deficit to 4-3.
O’Reilly’s productive night continued into the final frame as he added his fourth assist on Forsberg’s second goal to make it 5-3 Nashville.
“It is a good reset for us. It’s been frustrating and it’s kind of nice for all of us to step away from the game,” O’Reilly said. “To get that hunger back. When things aren’t going well it’s tough coming to the rink and you aren’t proud of your game. This is a chance to get away, take a reset, come back and we want to be hungry. This is an opportunity we have to do that.”
Buffalo didn’t shy away as they found the back of the net on the powerplay on a goal from Dylan Cozens with 12 seconds left on the man advantage making it 5-4. Zach Benson thought he tied the contest, but after a challenge from Nashville, the play was offside.
The challenge was the difference maker as Nashville ended their six-game skid going into the break. Jonathan Marchessault put the icing on the cake firing the puck into the empty net making it 6-4.
“There’s lots there. I wish I had some of the answers for his group and I really still don’t after 50 some games. Kind of reassess where I’m at, where our group is at and how can I help them,” Brunette said looking at his coaching performance during the break.
“There’s a few things in mind tweak-wise. We have four days of practice which will be nice and see if we can come up with a few things. I’ve liked a lot of the things we’ve done offensively and I know the results aren’t there. The expected goals and the zone shots, all of the things I believe are important are there. I’m going to go back and look. Maybe they’re not important but I believe they are. I think I’ll dig into that a little bit and there’s some things defensively I want to dig into. It’s hard where we’re at to make big adjustments but I think there are some tweaks that we could do.”
4 Nations Face-off
Nashville has forwards Filip Forsberg and Gustav Nyquist playing for Team Sweden at the 4 Nations Face-off which starts next Wednesday and runs until Feb. 20.
Goaltender Juuse Saros will be in net for Finland where he joins former teammate Kevin Lankinen.
The tournament begins next Wednesday at the Bell Centre in Montreal with Sweden taking on Canada with a 7 p.m. CT puck drop.
The two teams with the best tournament records will then advance to a one-game Final at TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts.
For more info on the 4 Nations tournament click here.
Follow Nick Kieser on Twitter/X: @KieserNick
Photos courtesy of the Nashville Predators
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