After barely scraping by one lowly opponent, the Nashville Predators insist they won't look past another one.
The Predators seek a season-high fourth straight win overall and sixth in a row at home Saturday night against a Columbus Blue Jackets team that has dropped five straight.
Nashville (15-5-2) beat Edmonton 1-0 in overtime on Thursday to improve to 9-1-1 at home. Filip Forsberg's goal came after Pekka Rinne was forced into saving a penalty shot in the extra session.
The Predators got off to a bad start, getting outshot 14-7 after one period.
"There's definitely room for improvement with regard to our start and making sure we respect any opponent that we play," coach Peter Laviolette told the Predators' official website. "Anybody's capable of beating anybody."
Matt Cullen may return after being out with an upper-body injury. He took part in Nashville's 50-minute practice Friday, echoing the need to not overlook Columbus.
"You can't really control (the opponent's record), you're aware of it for sure, but bottom line is we've just got to play how we can play," Cullen said. "Maybe it wasn't our very best game (Thursday), but we found a way to win and played well enough to win."
The Blue Jackets (6-14-2) have suffered 5-0 defeats on both ends of their latest losing streak, with this 0-4-1 slide falling short of a 0-8-1 stretch Oct. 24-Nov. 11 as their worst of the season.
Friday's home defeat to Vancouver was particularly disheartening. Columbus trailed 1-0 after two periods before conceding in the first minute of the third and eventually giving up three more in a 5:37 span later on.
"It just seems like we don't have enough confidence," winger Nick Foligno said. "It sounds stupid but that's kind of the thing I notice the most. We get scored on, it's like we just deflate. It's just a mental toughness that we need to have and we don't have it right now."
Coach Todd Richards made the unusual move of pulling Sergei Bobrovsky on a face-off in the Canucks zone with 5 1/2 minutes left and the score at 3-0. It backfired when Vancouver's Brad Richardson scored an empty-net goal with 5:22 remaining.
Richards insisted that Columbus did not quit in the third-period collapse.
"I'm not going to say quit. I'm not going to say that about our guys," Richards said. "What did I see? I see a team that's frustrated. They put in the work, it was a good hockey game for two periods, they scored early (in the third) and again, a team that's searching."
The Blue Jackets have won consecutive games at Nashville after not winning in regulation there in their previous 22 visits. That stretch included a 17-game home win streak for the Predators for five seasons between 2006-11.
Columbus won't be happy to see the familiar face of Rinne, second in the NHL with a 1.86 goals-against average. Rinne's 15 wins over the Blue Jackets are his most against any team, and he's 11-2-2 with a 2.22 GAA in 15 home starts against them.
Nashville's last four-game win streak was from Jan. 31-Feb. 7, 2013. The Predators' most recent single-season, six-game run at home was from Jan. 7-Feb. 4, 2012.
