Catfish tosser says he was ‘dumb redneck with a bad idea’

However, they shouldn’t expect to get lucky again. It’s their ability to survive when they don’t.

“Murray played fantastic for us”, Penguins defenseman Ian Cole said. It left the guys from “Smashville” in a new position for the first time since they began their mad dash to the final a month ago: chaser instead of chasee as Game 2 looms on Wednesday night.

Guentzel tied it 1-1 at 16:36 of the first, four seconds after a Penguins power-play expired. And yet it didn’t matter.

Guentzel, who also scored the game-winning goal in the series’ opener, has 12 goals in the playoffs, the second highest total ever by an National Hockey League rookie, and five of them are game winners, an National Hockey League record.

“It’s not textbook”, said Pittsburgh captain Sidney Crosby, who picked up two assists. It wasn’t the prettiest, but we found a way. “At the end of the day, we’re up 1-0”.

The 22-year-old Guentzel finished with two goals to give him an NHL-high 12 during the playoffs, the second-most by a rookie in postseason history.

He said that “like an ignorant redneck, I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be awesome to throw a catfish on the ice at this game?'” We may never know. “For me, that’s Game 3”. We looked at the film and we actually had a lot of zone time.

Ryan Ellis, Colton Sissons and Frederick Gaudreau scored for the Predators. With the two-man advantage, Evgeni Malkin continued to make a case for the Conn Smythe Trophy by blasting a slap shot through Pekka Rinne’s glove.

Nashville, which trails the series 1-0 despite dominating Game 1, is keeping things status quo. “I can’t remember facing that kind of game before”.

Forward Colin Wilson did not take part in Nashville’s morning skate Wednesday at PPG Paints Arena after missing Game 1 on Monday night because of a lower-body injury.

Pittsburgh looked a step behind at the outset.

If the Predators had played with confidence leading up to that goal, having it disallowed had the opposite effect.

Tradition, basically. The Tennessean reports that it started in 2003, when someone threw a catfish on the ice during the playoffs at a home game. “We hate the score”.

“We’re not looking at anybody”, said Nashville defenceman P.K. Subban, when asked about Rinne’s performance. The Penguins had a 3-0 first period lead completely unravel and failed to generate a single shot for 37 minutes, including zero in the second period.

Nashville, unlike the Senators, didn’t bail. They hooked, held and slashed them at every opportunity trying to get them to take bad penalties, but they did not take the bait. Nashville outshot the Penguins 26-12, but Pittsburgh scored on five of these shots allowing them to win 5-3.

It was enough for Nashville coach Peter Laviolette to send in backup goalie Juuse Saros in to replace Rinne.

Now, nearly 12 months later, Guentzel has become a central figure in the Penguins’ Stanley Cup defence. They can win with both firepower and precision.

The next shot he faced was Guentzel’s goal with 3:17 to play. That’s hard for any goalie to do, but especially one that’s still really quite young.