Nashville doesn't cough it up, defeats Atlanta 6-3

Fan Favorite Jordin Tootoo had a career game

Nashville got one step closer to the playoffs with a 6-3 victory over the Atlanta Thrashers, a game that marked the first time this season that Nashville has scored at least six goals.

The Predators have been having trouble closing out opponents lately. Tuesday night was no different; as Nashville allowed a 5-0 lead to turn into a 6-3 final score.

Atlanta may not be a playoff-caliber team, but for Nashville to finally show signs of a killer instinct against any team would be a good sign at this point in the season, and it sucks that we nearly had yet another meltdown. If the Thrashers were any better, the Preds could have been in a whole lot of trouble.

We could come up with an entire article solely detailing each goal that the Preds scored, but I’ll try to condense it just a bit. Matt Halischuk got the scoring started at 5:24 in the first period with his third goal of the season. Jordin Tootoo expanded Nashville’s lead to 2-0 at 19:18 in the first period, and then the score jumped to 3-0 with Sergei Kostitsyn’s first goal of the game a mere forty-nine seconds later, which moves Kostitsyns point streak to ten games, scoring 14 points over that time.

Hell yeah, 3-0. No way Nashville screws THIS one up, right? …right?

Sigh.

Jordin Tootoo got his second (two, two…anyone?) goal of the game 1:56 into the second period to push the lead to 4-0. There’s no way Smashville coughs this one up.

Everything was going great for Nashville. Former Predators goalie Chris Mason got pulled after giving up four goals on just 13 shots. Hometown favorite Tootoo was having a career game (his first career three-point game, actually), and

After jumping out to a 4-0 lead through the first two periods, Nashville DID show SOME signs of letting up, allowing the Thrashers to score two goals in the third period, but the Predators added two of their own, bringing the final score to 6-2. Kostitsyn got the scoring started in the third with his second of the game at 2:28, followed almost immediately by Atlanta’s first goal, which was scored by Blake Wheeler.

Okay, 5-1, we can live with that.  We would love a shutout, but that’s still a great, lopsided win. Just hold on Preds, come on!

Mike Fisher came through for Nashville on the power play a mere three minutes later to make the game 6-1. There is absolutely no way Nashville should screw this up. I mean seriously…

Guess what? At 16:25 in the third period, Atlanta scored two goals in forty-five seconds, the first once again by Blake Wheeler, and the second by Nik Antropov.

6-3. We won the game, but were outscored 3-2 in the third period by a team whose season will be ending next week. It’s a slight improvement over our recent collapses (as detailed by Streeski earlier) but it’s still a bit unnerving.

The Predators have not quite clinched a playoff berth yet, as Dallas refused to do us any favors by winning as well, but they did jump up to fourth in the standings, just a point ahead of Phoenix and LA.

Nashville concludes their home schedule Friday against Columbus, and plays their last regular season game Saturday night in St. Louis.