Basisphilosophie » Pekka Rinne continued his dominance over

NASHVILLE St. Louis Blues Hats Authentic , Tenn. (AP) — Tampa Bay and tied a record with one of his boyhood heroes in the process.Ryan Johansen had a goal and an assist, Rinne stopped 29 shots, and the Nashville Predators beat the Lightning 3-2 on Monday night.It was Rinne’s 319th victory, tying him with Miikka Kiprusoff for most NHL wins by a Finnish-born goaltender.“For sure it’s a cool thing,” he said. “Kiprusoff is one of my heroes for sure. I got to play against him and things like that, but when I was a teenager growing up, I looked up to him. To me, he’s the greatest Finnish goalie. It’s pretty cool that I’m tied with him.”Rinne improved to 9-0-1 in his career against the Lightning. His best save came on Brayden Point’s breakaway in the first period. He also denied J.T. Miller and Victor Hedman in an 11-second span late in the second after the Predators were hemmed in their zone for a prolonged period of time following an icing.Kyle Turris and Filip Forsberg also scored for Nashville, which has won two straight.“We know that they’re one of the top teams in the league, and it ended up being a good game, a good matchup,” Nashville coach Peter Laviolette said.Hedman and Nikita Kucherov had the goals for Tampa Bay, which snapped its two-game winning streak. Louis Domingue finished with 31 saves.Forsberg gave the Predators a 2-1 lead at 6:43 of the second. Skating into the Lightning zone on the right side,Mattias Ekholm left a drop pass for his Swedish countryman just inside the blue line. Forsberg skated to the left faceoff dot and snapped a quick wrist shot high to Domingue’s glove side.“We have to have better starts,” Lightning forward Alex Killorn said. “We haven’t had great starts as of late. If we can do that, it will be a much different game for us.”Johansen made it 3-1 at 10:16 of the second when he tipped Craig Smith’s wrist shot from the right side over Domingue’s stick.“I think for a fan Custom St. Louis Blues Jerseys , tonight’s game was awesome,” Johansen said. “They got to see two of the top teams in the league right now going toe to toe. We did a lot of good things. They did good things. Ultimately, we found a way to get the win done.”Late in the second, Killorn had an apparent goal disallowed as he was sent to the penalty box for tripping Nashville defenseman Ryan Ellis.“They dictated the pace in the first half, and we dictated in the second half,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. “We both scored three, one was called back. That was the ultimate difference in the game.”Kucherov pulled the Lightning within one at 3:25 of the third. Point carried the puck in on the right side and found Kucherov skating through the slot, where he made a move on Rinne before beating him with a backhand.Rinne gloved down another attempt by Kucherov all alone in front with 7:31 left in the third to preserve the Nashville lead.In the final seconds of the third, Ekholm pulled a puck off of the goal line after Hedman’s shot hit Rinne and trickled behind the Finnish netminder toward the goal line.Hedman scored the game’s first goal at 5:10 of the opening period. Carrying the puck into the Nashville zone on the left side, Hedman pulled up at the top of the left faceoff circle and ripped a slap shot over Rinne’s glove.Turris tied it with 4:41 left in the first. Tampa Bay killed of 53 seconds of a Predators two-man advantage, but with just 3 seconds remaining in the second penalty, Turris beat Domingue with a slap shot from the right faceoff dot just inside the near post.Turris has goals in back-to-back games.NOTES: Lightning D Erik Cernak picked up the secondary assist on Hedman’s goal, registering his first career NHL point. … Tampa Bay D Ryan McDonagh got his 200th career assist. … Ekholm has 100 career NHL assists. … Nashville D Roman Josi has four assists in his last three games.UP NEXTLightning: Host Florida on Wednesday night.Predators: Host St. Louis on Wednesday night. SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Timo Meier’s return to San Jose’s lineup gave the Sharks just the boost they needed after a rough road trip.Meier had a goal and two assists in his first game back from an injury, Martin Jones made 39 saves and the Sharks responded to a shuffle of duties for their assistant coaches by beating the Carolina Hurricanes 5-1 on Wednesday night.“It felt great,” Meier said. “You don’t want to be sitting out watching games with an injury. For me it was important to get healthy. Obviously I was really excited to keep playing again. I had a lot of energy today and we played a great game overall.”Barclay Goodrow and Tomas Hertl got San Jose started with goals in the first period www.officiallightningprostore.com , captain Joe Pavelski added his team-leading 18th in the second period and Marcus Sorensen scored in the third to give the Sharks a convincing victory.Lucas Wallmark scored on the power play for the Hurricanes, who have scored just five goals in the past five games, losing four of them. Curtis McElhinney made 18 saves.“We’ve had too many like this, that’s the problem,” coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “We’ve played good enough to win and we don’t get any results. That’s hard on the guys. It’s been a weird year for this. It was a 5-1 game and you think ‘wow, that’s a terrible game,’ I didn’t see it that way. Maybe I’m wrong, I have to look at it again, but it certainly didn’t feel like that.”The Sharks had been outscored 20-7 in losing the first four games on their recent road trip before salvaging it a bit with a 3-1 win in Montreal. Coach Peter DeBoer shuffled the responsibility of his assistants a bit, moving Dave Barr to the bench to work with the forwards, making Rob Zettler the “eye in the sky,” and having Steve Spott shift from overseeing forwards to the defense.“After a road trip like that you have to look in the mirror,” defenseman Justin Braun said. “You can’t look at other guys. You have to figure out what you need to do to help the team win.”They did that as a team and built on that momentum from Montreal against the Hurricanes with Kevin Labanc setting up two goals in the first 10:10 and Jones stopping 17 shots in the first.Labanc took a bad bounce off the boards to feed Goodrow in front to open the scoring and then made a perfect pass from the boards that deflected off Hertl’s stick for a power-play goal midway through the first.San Jose blew a 2-0 lead at Carolina earlier this season, losing 4-3 in a shootout. But the Sharks managed to build on this advantage in the second. Meier deflected Radim Simek’s point shot past McElhinney for his 14th goal of the season. Meier had missed the previous three games with an upper-body injury.“He’s been there for us, he’s been solid for us most of the year,” Pavelski said. “For him to come back in Tampa Bay Lightning T-Shirts Authentic , he brings that speed. He plays a good amount of minutes and fills out certain situations, whether it’s a power play, 5-on-5. So it definitely gave us a little boost.”Meier added an assist on Pavelski’s goal, which came when a centering pass was deflected by Carolina’s Jordan Staal into his own net.“It’s tough to sit here and say what we need to do and not sound like I’m bashing us,” defenseman Justin Faulk said. “That’s the way it goes, you look at a few of their goals, they’re just throwing crap at the net, hits a stick, goes off a body. I don’t know.”The Hurricanes managed the power-play goal late in the second, but it wasn’t enough with Sorensen adding the insurance goal in the third off a pass from Meier.NOTES: Joe Thornton had three assists for San Jose, leaving him two shy of tying Marcel Dionne for 10th place all-time with 1,040. … Staal left the game in the third with an upper-body injury. … Simek had his first career point with the assist on Meier’s goal. … Hurricanes D Brett Pesce returned after missing nine games with a lower-body injury.UP NEXT:Carolina: Visit Anaheim on Friday.San Jose: Visit Dallas on Friday.