Cutter Gauthier had a goal and an assist, and Jacob Trouba had two assists for the Ducks (3-2-1), who had lost their past two. Lukas Dostal made 26 saves.
“Any time you get points, three points, I don’t know if we should search for that every night,” Johnston said. “I mean I’ll obviously try, but it’s a hard task. I’ll soak it in.”
Tyson Jost and Filip Forsberg scored for the Predators (2-3-2), who are 0-3-1 in their past four games. Juuse Saros made 28 saves.
“It wasn’t good,” Predators captain Roman Josi said. “We kind of gave them all their goals. I felt like it was really easy goals for them. Just mistakes we made, losing too many battles. It’s just kind of not the game you want to play. I feel like we played to their strength, which is like a wide-open game. They’re very skilled and fast, and that’s not how we’re successful. That’s why we lost tonight.”