NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Aaron Rome lost an edge and the Vancouver Canucks fell down.

The National Hockey League team played without five regular defencemen Thursday night because of injuries, but it wasn't the lack of players that hurt them but a lack of thought.

They made critical, unforced errors -- none of the worst ones by the minor-league replacements -- as the Nashville Predators beat the Canucks 3-1 to send Vancouver home with just one win from its three-game road trip.

Yes, the Canucks managed to preserve all their defencemen after losing four in the previous five games.

For safety reasons, Vancouver may wish to fly them home separately today to ensure there is still a lineup for Saturday's home game against the Dallas Stars.

While it is disconcerting to stock half the blue line Thursday with three players whose combined NHL experience was 15 games, it was some of Vancouver's best players who made the costliest mistakes.

Chris Tanev and Yann Sauve were just fine. Evan Oberg not so much.

But it was a bad line change and Henrik Sedin's failure to keep body position on Martin Erat, that led to one Nashville goal, and Christian Ehrhoff's weak play with the puck that caused another.

And the breakdown on the winning goal, when Aaron Rome stubbed his toe and fell while retrieving the puck from the faceoff that followed the Canucks' tying goal late in the second period, will make blooper highlights all week.

It was the kind of open-ice pratfall that might be greeted in practice with a teammate's shout of "sniper!" Rome may have wished there'd really been one because at least then he wouldn't have had to return to the bench as Canuck goalie Roberto Luongo fished the puck from the net.

"You don't want that to happen any time, and that was probably the worst time," Rome said.

In Rome's defence, it was an accident. Sedin's weak backcheck -- after Ehrhoff and Daniel Sedin timed their change badly -- and Ehrhoff's giveaway were sloppy.

"In a tight game like this -- they're a tight-checking team -- you make it really hard on yourself when you basically give them the goals and don't make them earn them," Ehrhoff said. "Second goal, I probably could have made a better play in the corner. I read the pressure wrong and made a bad play, and they got a tip on the shot. I could have made a better play there and that would have made a difference."

Ehrhoff's pass up the boards was intercepted, and Alexander Sulzer's point shot was deftly deflected in by new Predator Mike Fisher to make it 3-1 at 19:11 of the second period. The goal came just 49 seconds after the Nashville 2-on-1 caused by Rome's blown tire ended when Nick Spaling flipped in a loose puck after Tanev had blocked Patric Hornqvist's centring pass with his face.

The Canucks were the better team the first two periods, outshooting and outchancing the Predators, and their tying goal at 18:15 -- Daniel's quick stick-side shot beat excellent goalie Pekka Rinne on a power play -- should have given Vancouver momentum and a third-period launch pad. But the next 56 seconds decided the game.

The Predators were down two forwards after injuries to Marcel Goc and Steve Sullivan. Nashville doesn't score much at the best of times. But it jumped on Vancouver's mistakes in the next minute and the Canucks never really threatened after that.

"When you tie the game and give them two goals in 50 seconds, you're not going to come back against a team like that because I don't think they crossed the blue line when they went up by two," Canuck Ryan Kesler said. "They sat back and capitalized on a couple of lucky bounces and that was the game.

"They play a weird system. It's almost like they don't want to score goals and they just want to sit back and wait for us to make mistakes. It was a little frustrating. We got some quality shots, but we needed to generate a little bit more. Their goalie played well. Their goalie won them the game. It wasn't a very entertaining game for the fans, that's for sure."

The 15,337 at Bridgestone Arena didn't seem to mind. They roared through one television timeout for Rinne, who finished with 35 saves.

"I'm not overly educated; I don't know that many words," Nashville coach Barry Trotz said. "So I'm running of them to [describe Rinne]."

Luongo stopped 23 shots for the Canucks and was blameless on the three he didn't. Erat got goal-side of Henrik to make it 1-0, scoring on his own point-blank rebound at 14:13 of the second period. All the entertainment was packed into five minutes.

"I thought we played pretty good," Luongo said. "Unfortunately, the breakdowns that we had cost us. These guys are not the type of team that are going to give up many goals."

And with all their injuries, the Canucks aren't the type of team that can afford to give them away.

imacintyre@vancouversun.com