'That one stings': Wings' playoff hopes take major hit with 2-1 loss in Nashville

Nashville − The Red Wings can't afford to lose many more games if they harbor any playoff dreams.

It's getting difficult mathematically for the Wings with only 15 games remaining on the schedule.

A loss like Tuesday's in Nashville, 2-1, to the Predators, certainly doesn't help matters.

Alex Chiasson scored his third goal, a power-play goal at 17 minutes, 44 seconds of the third period, cutting the Predators' lead to 2-1.

But the Wings couldn't get the equalizer and suffered a costly loss.

"This is very tough," forward Andrew Copp said. "This is a game we had to win."

BOX SCORE: Nashville 2, Detroit 1

Frustrating for the Wings in that they couldn't capitalize against premier goaltender Juuse Saros until late in the game.

"It was a tight game," Chiasson said. "Sometimes the game flows, and if we get one early maybe it's a different type of game. We stuck with it for 60 minutes. Both goalies played real well.

"That one stings."

More:Matt Luff hoping luck has changed for the remainder of his season with Red Wings

Nashville (34-24-7) is 8-2-1 in its last 11 games and are making an unexpected late-season playoff push itself. But battered with injuries and playing a slew of young, minor-league recalls, but also having a world-class goaltender in Juuse Saros (28 saves), the Predators kept the Wings in check.

The Wings (30-28-9) are 2-6-1 in their last nine games and failed to move up in the standings on an evening several teams ahead of them also lost.

"Any loss is frustrating, especially one this time of year," defenseman Ben Chiarot said. "(We had a) hard time scoring, we had a lot of chances and played a pretty decent game, but just couldn't capitalize."

Kiefer Sherwood and Tommy Novak scored for Nashville.

Sherwood scored his third goal at 10 minutes, 58 seconds of the second period, snapping a 0-0 tie.

Shortly after a Predators' power play expired, Philip Tomasino dug the puck out of the corner, skated along the goal line, and threaded a pass through the slot to Sherwood, who flipped the puck past goaltender Ville Husso (14 saves).

Novak made it 2-0 with his 13th goal, just 2:22 into the third period, deflecting Cal Foote's shot from the point.

"A tip, a missed box out and that's part of the thing, we want to be defending correctly all the time and in a tight game like that, one missed box out and they make the play," coach Derek Lalonde said.

The Predators had several key regulars out of the lineup, but the young call-ups played poised and hard.

"With that lineup, there's some shifty skill guys too, but they played the right way," Copp said. "They were on top of us, and we were the better team most of the game but a couple of breakdowns and the margin for error is real small this time of year."

The Wings outshot Nashville 21-13 through two periods but weren't able to get anything past Saros. Dominik Kubalik was turned away on a two-on-one rush in the first period, and Pius Suter was denied on a point-blank opportunity in the low slot late in the second period.

The Wings killed all five Nashville power plays, while going 1-for-4 themselves. The extended penalty killing work, said Lalonde, was a factor in the end result, as was the performance of Saros.

"You have to tip your hat to their goalie," Lalonde said. "I'll have to watch it back to see if we could have done more around him as far as take away his eyes and space and done some things differently offensively. But we felt like we had a world class goalie performance against us.

"But the critique is we spent 10 minutes in the box. It was a great job by our penalty kill, we went five-for-five, but the fact we were a much better team five-on-five tonight, that's 10 minutes of the game we couldn't get rhythm in our game. Those stretches of five-on-five, lines were rolling, we had a good rhythm, and it could have been a much different outcome (with more even-strength time)."

ted.kulfan@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @tkulfan