The view from Nashville

The Nashville Predators have adopted the Lionel Ritchie song “All Night Long” as their victory song, but the Predators had their 4-0-1 run ended with last night’s loss to the Kings. Here’s how The Tennessean covered last night’s game, followed by some additional postgame quotes from the Predators’ locker room…

Nashville Predators fall to Los Angeles Kings

Predators feel David Legwand’s absence everywhere

—–

COACH BARRY TROTZ
(on the game recap…) “We weren’t disciplined enough; we took some bad penalties. We battled back, but it wasn’t good enough. … I give us some credit, we stayed in it. … I knew that the start was going to be critical, we talked about it before the game and we got off to a terrible start. … We took too many penalties. We took six penalties and you look at the 5-on-3 they scored just as the guy got out of the box…They’re not a high scoring 5-on-5 team. We had to stay out of the box; we didn’t.’’

—–

CRAIG SMITH
(on the game…) “I felt some areas we were doing some good things, but we definitely need to clear some things up before tomorrow night. (The Kings) are a pretty fast team. They jumped on us quick every time we made a mistake. … They have a lot of guys who can play, especially at the back end. They were pressuring us hard and their D was coming up and making it hard on our forwards in the zone. They’re a good team and they were capitalizing on it. … They had a tough loss last night, so they were a pretty hungry team tonight. We haven’t played a game in a couple days here but it’s no excuse. They’re a good team and so are we. They came off flying, they had some nice goals off that bat and I think that always helps.’’

(on losing David Legwand to injury in the first period…) “He’s huge. He’s our guy right now. He’s getting it done, day in and day out. He’s playing in all areas of the game. He’s been a big guy for us this year so far, so losing him, he’s a big piece in the puzzle, but we have a lot of guys here who can step up. If one guy goes down, everyone knows what they’re doing and how to react to it.’’

—–

PATRIC HORNQVIST
(on the game…) “They played a good game. We didn’t play that well and they deserve the two points. … They were just better than us today. We just have to come out better tomorrow in Anaheim. We have to be flying out of the gates and hopefully get a good start and take two points tomorrow.’’

(on losing Legwand…) “It changed (the game) a little, but all of the guys on this team are great players. We can’t complain about that. It’s something that’s going to happen every game. Almost every game someone gets hurt.’’

(on goaltender Andres Lindback…) “He played well. It’s not his fault we lost this game. We can’t give them two-goal leads twice. It’s not going to work in this league. Los Angeles is too good for that. They played a good game, we didn’t play that well and they deserved the two points.’’