Written by Kevin Baxter at LA Times.com
From the outside, Bridgestone Arena in downtown Nashville is a handsome, if oversized, building surrounded by office towers, a parking lot and the Country Music Hall of Fame.
In other words, nothing special.
But on the inside it’s a magical place, one bathed in yellow and often louder than a jumbo jet at full throttle. On Tuesday that helped the Predators pull a little more sleight of hand, scoring a pair of third-period goals to down the Ducks 2-1 and take a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven Western Conference finals.
Game 4 is Thursday.
“We love playing here,” Nashville forward James Neal said. “From the second we skate on the ice, it’s an amazing building to play in. Everyone says their fans are great. But this is a whole different level of support.
“The city, it’s on fire.”
So are the Predators, whose victory Tuesday left them 6-0 at home this postseason. It was also their 10th straight home playoff win over the past two seasons, the longest such streak in the NHL in 20 years.
Nashville wasn’t even in the league 20 years ago.
“You always try to establish your home building, [make it a] tough place to play. And I think we’ve been doing that,” said goalie Pekka Rinne, who turned back 19 shots. “Even in the regular season, we like to play at home.”
The goals Tuesday were scored by Filip Forsberg, who has one in each of the three games in the series, and Roman Josi, whose game-winner came with 2:43 left in regulation. Both came off fortunate rebounds and they stood up after Nashville had twice as many shots on goal and had two potential tiebreaking goals disallowed in an eight-second span of the third period, both because of goaltender interference.
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