Forsberg Questions Overtime Tripping Call After Predators' Shootout Loss to Islanders

Filip Forsberg did not quite say the referees got it wrong, and that is exactly why his complaint will stick around. The Nashville Predators star admitted the overtime tripping call against him was probably a penalty if you read the rulebook strictly. Then he asked the question that matters more: why did the call come from the official 200 feet away, on a play where nothing was happening, while the official standing right beside it kept his whistle down? Nashville survived the penalty, then lost 4-3 in a shootout to the New York Islanders on Tuesday night at Bridgestone Arena, and Forsberg’s frustration was not really about one call. It was about a team that keeps doing the hard part, erasing a 3-0 deficit, and then keeps losing the coin-flip ending.

What exactly did Forsberg say?

He split the difference in a way that is hard to argue with, and harder to dismiss. “If you look at the rule book, it probably is a (tripping penalty), but sometimes you’ve got to play the game a little bit, too,” Forsberg said, The Tennessean reports. Then he pointed at the mechanics of the call itself: “It’s probably a trip, but they get the puck, there’s nothing happening, and then the ref that’s 200 feet away (calls the penalty) and the other guy that’s right there doesn’t.”

That is two complaints folded into one quote. The first is about game management, the idea that a marginal trip on a dead play in overtime should not decide a game. The second is about consistency, the sense that the nearest official’s silence should count for something. Forsberg did not make excuses for the loss, and he did not claim the call cost Nashville the game. He claimed it was the wrong call at the wrong moment, and the distinction is why the quote travelled.

How did the penalty shape overtime?

It swallowed most of it. The call came 30 seconds into overtime, when Forsberg made contact with Islanders defenseman Matthew Schaefer’s skates, The Tennessean reports. The Islanders kept possession through an extended delayed call, and then Nashville had to kill a full two minutes skating 4-on-3. The Predators did kill it, which is part of why Forsberg’s complaint is measured rather than furious: the penalty did not directly produce a goal.

But it did produce the shape of the ending. The Islanders controlled most of the five-minute overtime, Reuters reports, aided by the penalty, and Nashville generated almost nothing offensively once it ended. A team that had spent the third period hunting a winner spent overtime surviving one. By the time the shootout arrived, the momentum of the comeback had been replaced by the grind of the kill, and Nashville’s shooters looked like it.

How did Nashville erase a 3-0 deficit in the first place?

By refusing to fold after a dreadful start. The Islanders scored twice in the first period through Anthony Duclair and Brayden Schenn, then made it 3-0 just 68 seconds into the second when Bo Horvat finished a one-timer off Schaefer’s feed, Reuters reports. That looked like the game. Then Nashville started chipping away. Forsberg scored on the power play midway through the second, his 98th career power-play goal, passing Kent Nilsson for the 11th most by a Swedish player in NHL history, per NHL.com. Alexander Kerfoot poked home a loose puck to make it 3-2, and Ryan O’Reilly tied it with 15:44 left in regulation, just 21 seconds after leaving the penalty box.

Coach Andrew Brunette liked what he saw in the comeback, even in defeat. “I like the grit and resilience to come back, I thought the third period was our best period,” he said. “We left some pretty good looking chances there that could have put the game way.” The point is worth holding onto, because it separates this loss from a collapse: Nashville was the better team for the last 25 minutes of regulation, and the overtime penalty interrupted that run rather than causing it.

What happened in the shootout?

The Islanders were cleaner, and Nashville’s shooters said so themselves. Kyle Palmieri and Horvat scored for New York, while Semyon Varlamov stopped both Predators attempts to earn his first win since November 2024, Reuters reports. Forsberg shot wide on Nashville’s second attempt, and Horvat sealed it with the next goal. Juuse Saros stopped 25 shots in defeat, but the shootout numbers told the story: the Islanders got two goals, Nashville got none.

Forsberg spread the blame honestly. “When games go to shootouts, you can’t expect the goalie to make every save,” he said. “Today they got two (goals) and we didn’t get any. I think the last (shootout), too, we got blanked. Which is not good enough for the shooters. Myself certainly included.” O’Reilly was blunter about his own form: “Shootouts have got to be a lot better, I’m just fighting it right now,” he said. “I’m just jittery right off my hands. I’ve got to sort that out, that will help us get a better chance.” A team that keeps reaching shootouts and keeps losing them has a skill problem, not just a luck problem, and both players said so out loud.

Why did this win matter so much to the Islanders?

Because it was a response to a public challenge. After a loss in Dallas that coach Pete DeBoer called the team’s first poor performance of the season, he went with 11 forwards and seven defensemen and essentially challenged his players to rediscover their identity, the New York Post reports. They answered by playing up ice and physical, their passes crisp and their battle level high, even after fumbling a 3-0 lead and failing to score on nearly four minutes at 4-on-3 in overtime. “We got back to our identity tonight,” Brayden Schenn said. “We know we have to play that way in order to be successful. It’s a gritty, hard-nosed game. Play good defense.”

It was also their first shootout win of the season, Reuters notes, after losing their other two games that went past regulation. The Islanders have now won a game they nearly threw away twice, first the lead and then the overtime power play, and the resilience angle cuts both ways: Nashville came back from 3-0 down, and New York came back from blowing 3-0 up. The shootout decided which comeback counted, which is a thin way to settle a game both teams deserved something from, and part of why Forsberg’s complaint about the overtime call resonates beyond one fan base. Officiating arguments are a recurring theme in this league right now, from a no-penalty hit that left a player leaving the ice to a shootout win built on disallowed goals, and players are increasingly willing to say the standard feels inconsistent from night to night.

What happens next for Nashville?

Washington comes to Bridgestone Arena on October 29, and the Predators will carry two problems into it. The first is the shootout record, which Forsberg and O’Reilly have now owned publicly. The second is the pattern of slow starts: Nashville trailed 3-0 before it started playing, just two nights after beating Colorado 6-2, and Brunette’s praise for the third period was also an indictment of the first. The point gained keeps Nashville on a run of at least a point in three straight games, but the standings do not remember comebacks. They remember wins, and Nashville has now lost two shootouts in a row in which its shooters were blanked. Forsberg’s question about the overtime call will not change Tuesday’s result. The shootout answer, on Thursday against the Capitals, might change the next one.