Nashville Predators’ Craig Smith scores a goal on Pittsburgh Penguins goalie Matt Murray during the third period in Game 3 of the 2017 Stanley Cup Final at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville on Saturday, June 3, 2017.Scott Rovak
Playing host to the Stanley Cup final for the first time in franchise history, the city of Nashville was in the mood to party. Country superstar Alan Jackson, wielding a guitar with a Predators' logo on the front and back, played an energetic set at the jammed-packed pregame party. Martina McBride sang the national anthem. Hank Williams Jr. was on stage, waving the rally towel, just before puck drop.
The decibel level in Bridgestone Arena was off the charts – and when it was all over, you could honestly say, the crowd practically willed the Predators to victory during Saturday's pivotal third game of the Stanley Cup final.
Normally, an early goal – which Pittsburgh scored, Jake Guentzel contributing his league-leading 13th of the playoffs – will quiet everybody in the building.
Not Saturday night.
The crowd stayed with it, and so did the Predators, who erupted for three second-period goals – including two scored in a span of 42 seconds – and then won the game going away, by a final tally of 5-1 over Pittsburgh, the defending Stanley Cup champions.
"Just driving into the arena before the game and then on TV, before the game, we saw the whole Broadway strip packed with people," Predators' defenceman P.K. Subban told NBC Sports postgame. "We knew it was going to be packed with people, and we wanted to take advantage of it, and we did. That's one game now – and we're going to move forward."
The victory by the Predators narrowed Pittsburgh's lead in the best-of-seven Stanley Cup final to 2-1.
Roman Josi, Frederik Gaudreau, James Neal, Craig Smith and Matthias Ekholm scored for Nashville against Penguins goaltender Matt Murray, who actually played very well in the first half of the game, when it was still close.
Game 4 will be played Monday night in Nashville, a city that has become extraordinarily receptive to the underdog Predators, who entered the 2017 NHL playoffs as the de facto 16th seed – the team with the poorest regular-season record to actually qualify for postseason play.
Thus far, they've eliminated three higher seeds – the Chicago Blackhawks, St. Louis Blues and Anaheim Ducks – and now presumably have the Penguins a little more worried than they were a day earlier. Pittsburgh is striving to become the first team in two decades to win back-to-back Stanley Cup champions and at different times, looked weary and almost out of gas, even after getting two days off between games.
Officially, Tennessee became the 15th U.S. state to serve as a Stanley Cup final venue since the NHL was founded in 1917 – and it is hard to imagine a wilder scene than the one on display Saturday, a packed house of over 18,000 people inside the building, about twice that many watching the viewing party outside.
Ultimately, they liked what they saw from the Predators, with Nashville flipping the script on Pittsburgh, which used its quick-strike attack to win the first two games of the series on their home ice.
This time, Nashville turned a one-goal deficit into a one-goal lead in a flash – a 42-second sequence early in the second period, which began when Pittsburgh's Justin Schultz was penalized for holding the Predators' Harry Zolnierczyk. It was an odd goal, just because Josi was unable to make a clean play on a cross-ice feed from Ekholm, a little bobble that actually turned out to be fortuitous.
It forced Josi to double clutch on his shot, and the short delay, along with the fact that his shot deflected off Pittsburgh penalty killer Carter Rowney, froze Murray and beat him glove side, which was where he was vulnerable Saturday night.
Up to that point in the game, Murray had been flat-out sensational for Pittsburgh. But shortly thereafter, the opportunistic Gaudreau scored his second goal of the Stanley Cup final, a quick wrister. Suddenly, Nashville was on top – and they never trailed again.
Predators' defenceman PK Subban calmly guaranteed a win in Game 3, which really had nothing to do with anything, other than taking some of the pressure and attention away from goaltender Pekka Rinne, who'd been under fire after struggling in the first two games of the series.
There was never any real question that the Predators would come back with Rinne, who is their No. 1 goaltender, and the main reason they're in the final in the first place.
But coach Peter Laviolette had some inexperienced observers wondering if he'd make a switch, just because he didn't name a Game 3 starter. Never mind that Laviolette is like almost every other NHL coach these days – refusing to divulge who is in, or out, of his lineup, feeling it could give the opponent important intelligence in terms of devising a game plan.
Rinne's time to shine came just after the Predators took their second-period lead, when he made important, successive saves on close-in chances by Phil Kessel and Chris Kunitz as the Penguins pressed for the quick equalizer. It didn't happen.
Murray was good at the other end, too, and probably a little unlucky when the Predators opened up a two-goal cushion with only 23 seconds remaining in the middle period, Neal scoring on a centring pass from Viktor Arvidsson that serendipitously deflected right onto his stick off defenceman Brian Dumoulin.
Smith and Ekholm turned it into a laugher with their third-period goals. When things started to get silly at that point, referees Wes McCauley and Brad Meier started sending a succession of players to the dressing rooms, with misconduct penalties, to keep tempers from erupting further.
Rinne has struggled since the middle of the third round, but he does lead the playoffs in wins, with 13 now, and has been especially good at home, where the Predators are now 8-1 in nine starts thus far.
As the lowest-seeded team in the playoffs, Nashville has started every series on the road, where they've been okay. But Rinne had a 1.54 GAA and a .947 save percentage at Bridgestone Arena in the playoffs, and on Saturday, he was far sharper than he'd been the last couple of weeks.
Subban said he didn't feel any extra pressure after promising a win, saying: "It's just hockey. It's a game, at the end of the day. I'm confident in my teammates and our ability to win hockey games when we need to. Today, our leaders stepped up."
According to Subban, the Predators' poise in handling the early adversity largely contributed to the victory.
"The first two games, we played good hockey," said Subban, "but that's a championship team and we can't afford to make the mistakes we made. People wanted to talk about Peks [Rinne], but we didn't play well enough in front of him. You saw tonight, we had a bad bounce early in the game to go down 1-0, but like our team has done the whole playoffs, we showed really good composure today, and we're going to take that into the next game."