Canadiens continue playoff push against struggling Predators

The Montreal Canadiens will continue their push for a playoff spot when they visit the struggling Nashville Predators on Sunday.

The Canadiens (37-30-9, 83 points) arrive in Music City riding a four-game winning streak that was extended with a 3-2 home victory over the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday.

Montreal trailed 1-0 going into the third period but tallied three consecutive goals to earn the victory.

“What we said was stay patient,” forward Brendan Gallagher said. “We knew we had it in this room. We can score goals. Just stay patient, stick with our game plan.”

The Canadiens are holding the Eastern Conference’s second wild-card spot, and boasting a four-point lead on the New York Rangers in the race. Both clubs have six games remaining in the regular season.

The winning streak has seen captain Nick Suzuki take his game to another level. Suzuki netted the game-winning goal and an assist, increasing both his goal-scoring and point-scoring streaks to four games in which he has netted five goals and nine points.

“He’s still young and he’s playing with two young players,” coach Martin St. Louis said, referring to Cole Caufield and Juraj Slafkovsky. “As they all mature together, get older, it’s only going to get better. What’s his ceiling? I don’t know, but I don’t want to think about his ceiling because I want him to dictate what that ceiling is going to be.”

The Predators return home after suffering a 5-1 loss to the Dallas Stars on Thursday, which runs their latest losing skid to five games.

Nashville (27-41-8, 62 points) has long been eliminated from playoff contention and had very little pushback to finish the season on a strong note or even play spoiler.

The Predators had an all-too-familiar performance in this disappointing campaign when they faced off against the Dallas Stars.

“They’re a really good offensive rush team, and we didn’t give them much in the first (period),” forward Steven Stamkos said of the latest loss. “And then kind of halfway through the game you could tell we were starting to turn some pucks over and feed their rush. It just felt like it was a matter of time before it kind of burned us, and it did.”

Nashville coach Andrew Brunette was not at Saturday’s practice due to a personal matter, and there was no word whether he would be back with the team in time for the game.

The game may mark the NHL debut of 2023 first-round draft pick Matthew Wood, the 6-foot-5 forward who signed an entry-level contract in the past week after finishing his season at the University of Minnesota.

“I’ve grown in lots of ways,” said Wood, who was chose 15th overall. “I’ve gotten a lot stronger skating-wise, gotten faster and more mobile. … One of my strengths is that I love learning, and I’m always going to try to continue to learn. This is a huge learning opportunity for me.”

-Field Level Media