Nashville Predators
Projected points: 92.6
Playoff probability: 36.3%
Stanley Cup win probability: 0.4%
Their hopes get higher if: The offense cranks it up a notch again. Coach Andrew Brunette arrived in Nashville with the promise of bringing fast and effective offense to the Predators. Fast, they’ve been. Effective? Not always.
The Predators hit their stride one month into the season, scoring four goals or more in six of nine games. In the past month, they’ve done that only four times in 15 games without the benefit of a shootout. It’s not like their offense has dried up — the Predators have scored fewer than two goals in a game only three times in 38 contests this season — but it hasn’t rolled like it did early on.
Their hopes get lower if: Their special teams can’t improve. The Predators are middle of the pack on the power play and 25th overall on the penalty kill (77.4%). They have scored five shorthanded goals, but they’ve given up 28 power-play goals to opponents. Is it a personnel issue? An execution issue? Whatever the case, the PK in particular has hurt the Predators this season.
3 comments
Feels like some of our early season puck luck is back where we should have scored a lot more against the Blackhawks but the goalie stood on his head and a few pucks took some unlucky bounces. Also, feels like we could have a few more wins if we were able to hold on to 2 goal leads a bit better. Think it’s fair to expect inconsistency with a young team like this. If we get some better offense and Saros plays at his usual amazing level and not how he played early in the season, then we’ll go on a run.
Not only the PK but not being able to finish games. Early in the season, we choked several 2 or more goal leads and end up losing. Our record would be quite different if we didn’t give up late game leads so often this year.
I think it’s going to be hard for the Preds to sneak into the playoffs this season. Top 3 in the Central seems impossible at this point and I think it’s between the Preds, Seattle and Arizona for the Wild Card 2 spot. I bet Edmonton gets the top WC spot.
We’ve got more points than both Edmonton and Arizona but we’re also a couple games ahead of them. We’re at 38, AZ is at 36, EDM is at 35. If both AZ and EDM won all their games up to game 38 – they’d both have more points than us.
Edmonton has won 14 of their last 17, McDavid and Drai are hot and Ekholm literally is on the best defensive pair in the NHL. They’re wagon potential here.
Arizona and Seattle (and the Preds) are a little sketchier. To me it seems like that’s the big race in the west.
But the real question is what happens if we make the playoffs. Vancouver has trounced us multiple times and we’ve struggled against playoff caliber teams.
7 of the next 9 games area against playoff teams (Dallas twice, NYI, Vegas, LA Kings, Arizona and Florida – everyone of those is top 3 in their division except AZ). I suspect we’ll have a lot more clarity about how good this team is closer to the deadline.