The Nashville Predators closed a three-game trip through eastern Canada on October 10 with a visit to the Ottawa Senators at Canadian Tire Centre, and the night carried more than the usual road-game stakes. Jayden Struble was set to make his Preds debut, while Vitali Pinchuk was in line for his NHL debut in the same game.
The puck was scheduled to drop at 6 p.m. CT in the first of two meetings between the teams this season. For Nashville, the trip ended after a 5-2 win over the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday night, a result that followed a 5-4 overtime loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs in Toronto and left the Predators trying to turn one strong finish into a cleaner road performance.
That matters because Nashville was not just chasing points on the calendar. The Predators had said they wanted five of a possible six points from the trip, which would have meant leaving eastern Canada with a near-perfect three-game haul and a stronger early foothold in the standings race. Instead, they arrived in Ottawa with one win and one overtime loss, and with the memory of Toronto still hanging over the trip even after the Montreal victory.
The Montreal game showed both sides of the story. Juuse Saros made 32 saves in the 5-2 final, Alex Kerfoot, Matthew Wood and Ryan O’Reilly scored for Nashville, and Adam Edström added two empty-net goals. It was the Predators’ first road win of the season, but the lineup also came out of the night with questions after Mavrik Bourque and William Trudeau left with upper-body injuries and did not return.
William Trudeau was placed on Injured Reserve on Friday and listed as week-to-week, and the uncertainty around him helped explain why the roster was still shifting as the team moved from Montreal to Ottawa. Nashville did not practice Friday while traveling, but was expected to hold a morning skate before facing the Senators, giving the coaching staff one more look at how to slot the new faces and account for the absences.
Andrew Brunette said Struble would make his Preds debut against Ottawa, and the move gave Nashville a 25-year-old physical defender it described as a player who can bring mobility and a hard-to-play-against edge to the backend. The timing also underlined how quickly the trip turned from a simple road swing into a live roster test, with a debut on defense and another debut up front arriving on the same night.
Vitali Pinchuk summed up the moment in one short sentence: “I’m so excited. It’s a dream come true.” For Nashville, the next step is clearer than the last one was. The club would head home with either a road trip that largely met its target or one that came up just short, and it would do so already knowing Ottawa had won three of four entering the matchup and had beaten the Philadelphia Flyers 2-1 on Thursday. The two teams were set to meet again later this season in Nashville.
