Look, the Nashville Predators didn’t win 53 games and rack up 117 points in the regular season by accident. This is a really good team, picked by many to win the Stanley Cup.

The Avalanche? They earned their way into this playoff series despite the loss of their top defenseman, Erik Johnson, and No. 1 goalie, Semyon Varlamov, to knee injuries.

Scratching defenseman Samuel Girard just before Game 2 on Saturday because of an upper-body injury left them even more shorthanded – Duncan Siemens replaced him, making his NHL playoff debut -- yet they hung in for three periods this time before falling 5-4 to dig a 2-0 hole in the first-round series.

Coach Jared Bednar told reporters after the game that Girard is day-to-day, that he’ll have a better idea at practice Sunday regarding the teenager’s availability for Game 3 Monday at the Pepsi Center.

If nothing else, the Avalanche have managed to give the Predators all they can handle, but they’ve still lost 12 consecutive games to them since a 4-3 win in Nashville on March 28, 2016. They’ve been outscored 52-28 in the streak.

They took too many penalties (seven) and made too many mistakes.

The Avalanche scored on their first shot for the second game in a row, this time by Gabriel Bourque, but not only were they unable to build on the 1-0 lead again, they watched the Predators score three unanswered goals – one on a power play and two during 4-on-4 skating situations.

Captain Gabriel Landeskog was assessed a tripping penalty with 57 seconds left in the first period and the Predators capitalized when their power play continued in the second. Kevin Fiala took a shot that was going wide but caromed past goalie Jonathan Bernier (26 saves) off Avalanche defenseman Patrik Nemeth’s stick (something that seems to happen an awful lot).

The Avalanche went on a power play moments later, but defenseman David Warsofsky (why is he playing?) negated it by taking a holding penalty 16 seconds into the man advantage.

Viktor Arvidsson and Ryan Johansen later scored 4-on-4 goals 3:56 apart to give Nashville its 3-1 lead before Nathan MacKinnon scored his first of the series on a backhand shot with 2:52 left in the period, cutting the deficit to 3-2.

Austin Watson, who scored in Game 1, made it 4-2 at 7:16 of the third period with a goal that followed a poor Avalanche line change.

The Avalanche closed to 4-3 at 9:14 when Landeskog deflected MacKinnon’s shot past screened goalie Pekka Rinne (26 saves) on a 5-on-3 power play, the Avalanche’s first power-play goal of the series.

But a hustling play by Ryan Hartman turned a potential Predators icing play into an empty-net goal and a 5-3 lead with 1:09 to go. Hartman raced down the ice, well ahead of Tyson Jost, to snag the puck after it came off the end boards and deposit it into the net.

The Avalanche pulled Bernier again for a sixth attacker and Alexander Kerfoot scored with 35.8 seconds remaining, but the Predators hemmed them in their end the rest of the way to secure the win.



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