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Hartnell and soul Preds jump out to 3-0 lead, hold on to beat Canucks 3-2Posted: Tuesday January 21, 2003 10:54 PMUpdated: Wednesday January 22, 2003 12:08 AM NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- The Nashville Predators' youth movement made its presence known with three players under the age of 25 scoring goals. Scott Hartnell had a goal and two assists, rookie Adam Hall had a goal and an assist, and David Legwand added what proved to be the winner as the Predators held off the Vancouver Canucks for a 3-2 victory Tuesday night. "For us to be successful, we have to get some balanced scoring," coach Barry Trotz said. "The younger guys are starting to show their offensive thrust a little bit. "Hartnell is coming around and having the year we expect him to have. He has been real consistent after the first 20 games of the season. We have gutted it out through a lot of injuries and adversity. We're learning and getting better." Tomas Vokoun made 31 saves for the Predators who played without their leading scorer, flu-ridden Andreas Johansson, and Kimmo Timonen, their top defenseman who has a blood clot in his calf muscle. "It was a real gutsy effort," Trotz said. "We controlled the game for two periods. Tomas was real sharp in net. "Talk about adversity. We had it and we showed some great character. Everybody on this team gets the full applause from our coaching staff for their efforts." Todd Bertuzzi scored twice for Vancouver in the third period. The Predators opened the scoring in the first period at 8:15 when Hartnell scored from high in the slot with a one-timer that beat Vancouver goaltender Dan Cloutier to his glove side. Hall scored on the power play early in the second period, extending his league-leading rookie power-play total to six goals. He fired a shot from close range that bounced off of Cloutier's stick. Hall shot the rebound back at Cloutier and the puck went between his legs. "Denis Arkhipov made a great play from the side of the net to find me," Hall said. "We have been working on taking the puck to the net and get position and shoot. Half the time you are just throwing the puck to the net and crashing on the rebound. "We really took the play to them in the first two periods, but we let them get those two goals in the third. We have to think about that and improve on what we did. For whatever reason, in the third period Vancouver started getting it going on the power play. For most of the third we had cycles and shots back door. We had the chance to put them away." The Predators made it 3-0 lead with 5:40 left in the period, when Legwand skated in one-on-one from the right circle and fired a wrist shot high to beat Cloutier. "We played a solid 60 minutes," Hartnell said. "We were after them for most of the game. We kind of slowed down at the beginning of the third period." The Canucks battled back in the third period with goals slightly more than a minute apart by Bertuzzi. The first came on the power play at 8:22 and the second at 9:23. "We battled pretty hard," Vancouver coach Marc Crawford said. "We should have skated a little harder. Give Nashville credit. They skated very hard. We had opportunities. We just didn't get it done." Notes: Nashville's Clarke Wilm skated in his 350th NHL game.
...Vokoun is 5-1-1 in his last seven games and has allowed more
than two goals in only one of those games. ...Cloutier is second in
the NHL in victories with 24. ...Legwand is on a four-game point
streak with two goals and three assists and has 11 points (four
goals, seven assists) in his last nine games.
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