The Carolina Hurricanes peppered Nashville Predators goalie Juuse Saros with shots at a historic clip on Thursday, but it didn’t seem to matter. Saros recorded a Predators franchise record 64 saves in a 5-3 win over the Hurricanes.
Saros stopped 64-of-67 shots and racked up the third-most saves in NHL history, behind only Ron Tugnutt (70 saves against the Boston Bruins in 1991) and Mario Lessard (67 saves against the Minnesota North Stars in 1981).
In the midst of Saros’ historic effort, the 67 shots were also a Hurricanes franchise record. This marked the third time this season in which Saros registered at least 40 saves. He has been victorious in two of those three contests.
“He made multiple big saves,” Predators head coach John Hynes said, according to the Associated Press. “He’s one of the stars of our team. He played like that.”
Predators forward Mark Jankowski scored the game-winning goal at the 5:06 mark of the third period. Filip Forsberg, Mattias Ekholm and Cody Glass also scored goals for Nashville while Colton Sissons added an empty-net goal in the final seconds.
Saros was consistently up for the challenge, despite the Hurricanes constantly putting pucks on net. The Predators netminder made arguably his biggest save of the night in the final 2:30 when he robbed Hurricanes winger Andrei Svechnikov with a toe save at point blank range while the Hurricanes were on a power-play.
The Hurricanes had their franchise record 11-game winning streak snapped earlier this week when they fell to the New York Rangers. This marks the first time that they’ve lost consecutive regulation games since Nov. 6 and 9.
Thursday’s win was the third victory in four games for the Predators, who currently sit in sixth place in the Central Division with a 17-14-6 record (40 points).
