Following a loss on Friday night, the Chicago Blackhawks host the Nashville Predators on Sunday afternoon — a team that was supposed to be at the bottom of the standings, but has snuck their way back into the playoff conversation.
The Predators are currently in the second wild card spot with 73 points. That’s right: even though Nashville was supposed to be hanging out in the basement of the league alongside the Blackhawks, they’ve won three straight, have a 5-4-1 record in their last 10 games, and are making things difficult for the Pacific Division teams fighting for a wild card spot: the Los Angeles Kings (72 points), Seattle Kraken (71), and the San Jose Sharks (70). A part of Nashville’s recent success is positive regression towards the mean in shooting percentage. On the season, the Preds have been shooting at 8.48 percent at 5-on-5 — ranked 27th overall. In their last 10 games, that’s bumped up to 9.60 percent. Not an insane number, but Nashville has been finding the back of the net more often than they’re used to.
Helping the Predators score is Ryan O’Reilly with a team-high 64 points (24 G, 40 A). Forward Filip Forsberg is second with 59 points (30 G, 29 A), and Steven Stamkos leads in goals with 33 and has 55 points. The 24-year-old Luke Evangelista has 48 points (9 G, 39 A), and Erik Haula rounds out the top-five forwards in scoring with 33 points (11 G, 22 A). The blue line doesn’t feature much offensive punch. Roman Josi leads the way at 46 points (11 G, 34 A), and Brady Skjei is the next highest scoring blueliner with 21 points (1 G, 20 A). The injured are goaltender Juuse Saros (day-to-day) and defenseman Adam Wilsby (day-to-day).
Since the Hawks last saw the Predators (a 4-2 loss in Nashville on Feb. 26), the Preds made a handful of trades for the deadline. Just to highlight a few: forward Michael McCarron was sent to the Minnesota Wild for a 2028 second-round pick, forward Cole Smith was sent to the Vegas Golden Knights in return for Christoffer Sedoff and a 2028 third-round pick, and forward Michael Bunting was sent to the Dallas Stars for a 2026 third-round pick.
Here’s Nashville’s lineup from their 4-1 win over the Vegas Golden Knights on Saturday:
Predators lines vs Knights:
Stamkos -O’Reilly – Evangelista
Forsberg – Wood – Marchessault
Schaefer -Haula – L’Heureux
Jost -Svechkov – Wiesblatt
Skjei -Josi
Hague -Barron
Perbix – Ufko
Annunen
Murray
Injured: Saros, Wilsby
Scratched: Kemell#Smashville
— 32 Hockey Updates (@32HockeyUpdates) March 21, 2026
For the Blackhawks, they’re coming off a 4-1 loss to the Colorado Avalanche — the tail-end of a back-to-back against the best team in the NHL. The Hawks gave up two power-play goals, which knocked their penalty kill from the top spot in the league to second (84.1 percent) — not that it matters. What does matter is that both Connor Bedard and Frank Nazar have 10 points in their last 10 games. While the standings don’t matter much for the Hawks (64 points and 4-3-3 in their last 10), a strong finish from the young core is the most important factor of the season. And we might be getting more young Blackhawks to watch soon, too.
While they won’t be in this afternoon’s game, both Sacha Boisvert and Anton Frondell are expected to make their NHL debut sometime soon. Boisvert is still working out visa issues, and Frondell’s season with his SHL club ended in the postseason on Saturday. The former 2025 third overall pick, Frondell, will be of particular interest. Will he start immediately on Bedard’s wing? How will his game translate to the NHL? But first, the Hawks have an afternoon game against a boring team donned in mustard-colored sweaters.
Here are the Hawks’ lines from Friday’s game (which saw some mid-game shuffling):
Blackhawks in warmups without Mangiapane and Crevier:
Greene-Bedard-Burakovsky
Bertuzzi-Nazar-Teräväinen
Slaggert-Donato-Mikheyev
Lardis-Toninato-Lafferty
Vlasic-Levshunov
Kaiser-Rinzel
Del Mastro-Grzelcyk
— Mark Lazerus (@MarkLazerus) March 21, 2026
Let’s go Hawks.
Tale of the Tape
Blackhawks — Statistic — Predators
46% (29th) — 5-on-5 Corsi For — 50.95% (11th)
43.58% (32nd) — 5-on-5 Expected goals for — 50.58% (15th)
2.58 (30th) — Goals per game — 2.93 (20th)
3.14 (22nd) — Goals against per game — 3.32 (27th)
46.6% (31st) — Faceoffs — 50.9% (13th)
18.6% (22nd) — Power play — 23.3% (9th)
84.1% (2nd) — Penalty kill — 80.6% (12th)
(All stats from this season)
How to watch
When: 2:00 p.m. CT
Where: United Center, Chicago
TV: CHSN
Webstream: ESPN+
Radio: WGN 720