from Joe Rexrode of The Tennessean,

...Game 7 is the pinnacle of Stanley Cup playoff hockey, a gift to all who love sports and, in this series especially, a great unknown. We know the winner of Thursday’s game will go on to play the Vegas Golden Knights in the conference finals for the right to represent the West in the Stanley Cup Final. We know the loser will fall well short of a realistic goal of winning it all, and that a playoff system that has the top two teams in the regular season meeting in the second round will be rued in one of these two cities while the other celebrates.

We just don’t know how this thing will go on the ice. Experience is in the Predators’ favor. The core of this team won the first Game 7 in franchise history, two years ago in the first round at Anaheim, then lost Game 7 at San Jose in the next round. This is new territory for the Jets’ nucleus of young stars. Nineteen Predators have Game 7 experience, a combined total of 44 games of it. For the Jets, it’s five players, 10 games.

But as Maurice pointed out in downplaying intangibles after Winnipeg’s Game 6 failure, it’s playoff hockey. No prior experience guarantees any result. The fact that Maurice is 2-0 all-time as a head coach in Game 7s is not going to win a puck battle in the corner or finally help star forward Patrik Laine solve Pekka Rinne. The fact that Predators coach Peter Laviolette is 5-2 all-time in Game 7s will not spring center Kyle Turris to a breakout game or prevent a weird bounce off the boards.

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