Detroit at Nashville - Game Two Scoring Chances

Definitely still playing catch-up, but hopefully I'll have caught up before the series is over. Unless you're a Nashville fan, of course. A closer look at Game Two after the jump.

The Game:

Some Thoughts:

Strange game for the Predators. They came out very strong for the second consecutive game, but this time they weren't able to take the lead. After the Red Wings scored, I expected the Nashville push to get stronger, but in actual fact, the Red Wings dominated for the rest of the period and went to the intermission with a two-goal lead.

The match-ups were quite similar to Game One, as you'd expect, and I again thought that Nashville did a good job of defending. With Suter and Weber taking Pavel Datsyuk's line, you'd expect Henrik Zetterberg's group to have a field day, but it didn't happen in either game. That's a credit to Roman Josi and Kevin Klein who have been much better to my eye than I was expecting them to be.

The late-season acquisitions also make a big difference for Nashville. Detroit is able to ice, basically, two really high-end lines. The forwards they've used the most against Detroit's top two lines are Mike Fisher, Martin Erat, Sergei Kostitsyn, Alexander Radulov, David Legwand, and Andrei Kostitsyn. Two of those six didn't join the team until after the trade deadline, and without them, the Predators would have had a much tougher time matching up.

Alexander Radulov is an interesting player. The guy has a lot of skill and plays with a tonne of emotion, but he must be accustomed to getting the benefit of the doubt in the KHL. Dude went completely ape on one of the linesmen for calling a pretty routine offside. Can't imagine that attitude will serve him well going forward.