CHS Wrestling coaches (left to right) Kyle Kriz, Roger Barlow(in back) and Randall Jennings(leaning forward) look on during action last season

The Coffee County Central High School wrestling season came to end on Saturday in the Region 5-AAA Individual Tournament.  The Red Raiders failed to qualify a wrestler for the state individual tournament as a part of the 2 day regional tournament at Tullahoma.

The Red Raiders had a pair of wrestlers that were 1 win away from advancing to the state.  Owen Teague(wrestling at 145 pounds) fell in the semifinal round of the consolation bracket to finish the tournament with a record of 2 and 2.  Teague got a pair of pin fall wins before falling in a major decision.  Rein Bozich(138) also made it to the consolation final before getting pinned to finish with a 2 and 2 record.

Noah O’Shields(126) finished the tournament with a record of 1 and 2 with a decision win.  Dustin Duke(106), Joseph White(132) and Zach Adams(285) also competed for the Red Raiders.

Filip Forsberg scored a short-handed goal 6:02 into the third period and the Nashville Predators rallied from a three-goal deficit to beat the Dallas Stars 5-3 on Sunday night.

Roman Josi scored twice, Calle Jarnkrok got the tying goal 4:40 into the third and Mike Fisher added an empty-netter with 1:38 left. James Neal and P.K. Subban each had two assists, and Nashville snapped a two-game skid.

The Predators can breathe a little easier during their upcoming five-day break after avoiding a second loss in two days on home ice. Embarrassed in a 7-4 defeat to Florida on Saturday, they came out feisty from the opening faceoff, only to give up the first three goals.

Jamie Benn had a goal and an assist, Patrick Sharp and Devin Shore had a goal apiece and Tyler Seguin had three assists. Dallas has lost five of six.

With the win, Nashville evened up the season series between the Central Division teams at 2-2. The Predators will visit Dallas on April 6.

The Predators came out very chippy against another team that likes to fight. The result was a pair of fights within the first minute and a third midway through the period. Dallas got a full two minutes of 5-on-3 off the second fight that also featuring penalties on Subban and forward Austin Watson just 45 seconds into the game.

With the Predators racking up eight penalties in the period, the Stars got plenty more chances. Benn scored his 18th this season on the man advantage at 12:24 of the first with a wrist shot from the left circle. Dallas took advantage of its second 5-on-3 late in the period when Sharp beat goalie Pekka Rinne with a wrist shot from the left side at 15:46 for a 2-0 lead.

Shore gave Dallas a 3-0 lead with the Stars’ third power-play goal at 12:02 with a snap shot from the right on a nice pass from Brett Ritchie.

Nashville finally got on the board at 15:25 when Josi scored his eighth this season on a wrist shot unassisted. Then Craig Smith had a chance off the ensuing faceoff, earning his first career penalty shot. But Kari Lehtonen, playing for the second straight night, easily stopped Smith’s shot off his pad.

Josi scored his second of the game on a 5-on-3 45 seconds into the third period, but the Predators failed to score on the remaining 1:37 of the man advantage. It didn’t matter as Jarnkrok skated up the right side and beat Lehtonen stick-side for his 11th, and Forsberg gave Nashville its first lead with his goal off a breakaway. Forsberg beat Lehtonen’s glove with a wrist shot at 6:02.

NOTES: Subban reached 300 career points with his two assists. … Before the game, Nashville put F Cody McLeod on injured reserve and activated F Harry Zolnierczyk. … Josi now has a goal in three straight games for the first time in his career. … Stars D Jamie Oleksiak played his 100th NHL career game. … Seguin has 10 points (four goals, six assists) over his last 10 games. … Predators F Viktor Arvidsson had an assist and now has nine points (six goals, three assists) in his last six games.

Pete Weber’s Postgame Report

Viktor Arvidsson recorded his first career hat trick, but it wasn’t enough for the Nashville Predators as they fell, 7-4, to the Florida Panthers at Bridgestone Arena on Saturday afternoon.

After the first period ended 1-1, Nashville allowed four goals in the second period, including three in less than three minutes, an effort that Preds Head Coach Peter Laviolette called “gross.”

“We didn’t play with any purpose,” Laviolette said. “No passion. No effort. You’re never going to win a hockey game [like that]. The actions that we gave are going to give us the results that we got. It’s that simple.”

“That was a huge game for us, and we just didn’t come out,” Captain Mike Fisher said. “We have to be a lot better.”

Jaromir Jagr tipped in a puck to give Florida a 1-0 lead early in the first, but that was followed by a floating shot from Roman Josi on the power play to even the score before the intermission.

The teams traded tallies in the second, first from the Panthers, before Viktor Arvidsson deflected a puck past Roberto Luongo to tie the game once more. But two more quick goals from the Panthers led to the end of Pekka Rinne’s afternoon, and the visitors notched their fifth tally minutes later after Juuse Saros took over in net.

Before the stanza was out, Arvidsson tallied his second of the game and 17th of the season, this time shorthanded, to give the Preds their third goal and a boost of life.

In the third, Jonathan Huberdeau gave the Panthers the three-goal lead once more before Arvidsson tallied on the power play for his third of the afternoon.

Arvidsson’s efforts were the lone bright spot on an afternoon that didn’t play out the way Nashville wanted it to, and Laviolette made that clear.

“Big time [inconsistency],” Laviolette said. “Performance inconsistency, period inconsistency, game inconsistency; the first half of the game, we weren’t ready to play. The second half we played [the game] the wrong way. All we did was retaliate to their aggressiveness. That’s not going to get you the results either. Our mindset has to be right from the start, and it wasn’t tonight. They won a hockey game. We didn’t show up. And we need to show up tomorrow.”

That game tomorrow comes against the Dallas Stars, a team that also finds themselves playing desperate hockey trying to stay in the playoff picture, helped with a 5-2 win over Carolina on Saturday afternoon.

“The only good thing right now is that we play tomorrow,” Laviolette said. “[We] get a chance to move forward and take something that was ugly and try to learn from it and be better prepared. A lot of times, they say you should put [a game like that] in the trashcan and forget about it. I think we should take it home and wrestle with it all night.”

Notes:

With a power-play goal on Saturday, Roman Josi has scored with the man advantage in consecutive games for the first time in his career.

Viktor Arvidsson is tied for the League lead in shorthanded goals with three.

The Predators are right back at Bridgestone Arena tomorrow evening for a 5 p.m. CT start against the Dallas Stars, Nashville’s final game before their mandatory five-day break begins on Monday.