ANAHEIM — The son of a carpenter, who else was going to save the Nashville Predators?
Pontus Aberg — the first and only Pontus ever to play a National Hockey League game — bestowed upon Nashville a 3-2 lead in their Western Conference Final. Promoted to the first line due after injuries to both Ryan Johansen and Mike Fisher, Aberg flew through the air like the Swedish Bobby Orr to bang home a rebound, goal No. 2 in one of the gutsiest, grittiest, 3-1 road wins you’ll ever see.
“My dad is a carpenter. He used to play hockey. That’s how I started,” he said through a busted tooth he’d suffered moments before he scored. “A family with sports — my mom played handball back home. That’s how I started playing.”
Aberg would be taken off the ice moments after his goal by the concussion spotter in New York, due to the “face plant” that cost him that tooth.
“I didn’t expect that,” Aberg said. “It didn’t hurt me at all.”
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That a sub-six-foot, Swedish draft pick would rise to score the biggest goal of Game 5 is a metaphor for what the Predators, under draft-and-develop general manager David Poile, simply do better than perhaps all 29 other organizations.
“He’s a guy who, in my opinion, could have been playing on our team all year,” said defenceman P.K. Subban, who has more flash and dazzle in one pinkie than any five of Nashville’s hard-working Swedes have in their entire bodies of work. “But we have such depth and such experience — players that have paid their dues in the minors — that it didn’t happen.”
You know when they talk about guys “stepping up” when injury strikes a hockey team? That old cliché, “Next man up?”
Well, the Hockey Hall of Fame will want this game — May, 20, 2017: Game 5, Western Conference Final — as the game folks can watch to truly understand how hockey teams give us nights like this one. Understaffed, on the road, odds stacked against them, the Preds simply weren’t supposed to win this game.
Instead, they get goals from Aberg, Colin Wilson and Austin Watson — three guys who could serve you a drive-thru burger and you wouldn’t bat an eye.
“Those are the goals you need, from unsung heroes,” said Vernon Fiddler, who got a chance to play due to injuries. “You look back at any championship teams, and you always say, ‘Remember when this guy stepped? And that guy stepped up?’ We needed someone to step up, and he was the guy.”
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Two nights before, leading scorer and first-line centre Johansen’s post-season had ended on the sharp end of a surgeon’s scalpel. Second-line centre and team captain Fisher had left that game midway through, and we doubt he even made the trip to California for Game 6.
“Those are two really big pieces of our team,” said Fiddler (who we exhort to repeat that Kevin Bieksa face every time we see him here). “Fish, everyone knows his reputation. And Johansen? I knew this kid was hard to play against, but he’s the real deal. Two guys we miss in the dressing room, and we were talking about them before the game.
“We wanted to bring the lead back [to Nashville] for them.”
Nashville was heading into The Pond with four centremen named Colton Sissons, Frederick Gaudreau (playing his 10th NHL game), Calle Jarnkrok and the much-travelled Fiddler.
Alas, it was Vern and the boys who were calling the tune by the end of Game 5.
“When you look at a complete team that’s the team you talk about,” Anaheim’s Andrew Cogliano had stated before the game. “We say that about other teams. But with that team? It’s true.”
Before the game began the Anaheim Ducks announced Rickard Rakell wouldn’t play due to injury and when Jonathan Bernier emerged to start the second period in goal we knew that John Gibson’s left leg ailment was too much to nurse through another playoff period.
Now the injury scales were even. Maybe even tipped in the Predators’ favour.
As if they needed the help.
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“Resiliency,” said defenceman Mattias Ekholm, whose game simply elevates in the eyes of anyone who gets to watch him every night, game in, game out. “Everyone just believes in this room that we’re just going to go there, we’re going to play hard. … That we’re just going to win.
“I don’t think anyone in here is going to be denied.”
Game 6 goes Monday in Nashville. Bring your earplugs.
There’s a trip to the Stanley Cup Final on the line.
