Nashville Predators players celebrate Nick Blankenburg’s power-play goal against the Vancouver Canucks on November 3, 2025 at Bridgestone Arena. JOHN RUSSELL/NASHVILLE PREDATORS

As the Nashville Predators look for positives in their 5-6-3 start to the season, the power play won’t be one of them.

Nashville ranks 26th among NHL teams with a measly 15.9% success rate (7-for-44) in man-advantage situations.

Ready for the silver lining?

Over their last five games, the Predators have five power-play goals on 15 opportunities, including two in Monday night’s last-second 5-4 overtime loss to the visiting Vancouver Canucks.

Power-play tallies from Eric Haula and Nick Blankenburg allowed Nashville to at least get one point.

“Being down two goals, it’s never easy to come back in this league,” Haula said. “Good resiliency by our group, and it’s nice that our power play was able to step up. We’ve been needing that.”

There’s reason for optimism beyond simple puck luck.

Predators coach Andrew Brunette recently opted for a new approach in how he deploys skaters on the power play. Rather than stacking the top unit with Nashville’s primary goal scorers, he split them evenly into two groups: Haula, Luke Evangelista, Filip Forsberg, Ryan O’Reilly and Brady Skjei followed by Blankenburg, Michael Bunting, Jonathan Marchessault, Steven Stamkos and Matthew Wood.

That adjustment helped the Predators go 2-for-4 on the power play against the Canucks.

“Obviously, the power play needs to get going for us,” Blankenburg said. “Both units are contributing, which is always good. We just have to continue to build off it and keep moving forward.”

Stamkos, known for his wicked slap shot from the left side, has just one goal – which came via the power play – on 30 shots this season.

He struggled during his first power-play action on Monday, giving the puck away on a failed zone entry pass to Bunting and later nearly causing a too-many-men penalty when he floated a cross-ice pass toward Nashville’s bench while Marchessault had his back turned for a shift change.

Brunette is still working to find the right line combinations to maximize Stamkos at 5-on-5 and on the man-advantage.

“He’s carrying a big burden of the power play right now,” Brunette said on Oct. 28. “He’s a Hall of Famer, obviously. First ballot. But he’s feeling it a little bit that way. He’s having trouble finding some chemistry. I think that’s kind of been for the whole time he’s (been) here.”

If Stamkos can bust out of his slump, it could help both the team’s power play and its overall offensive struggles. Nashville’s goals per game average is up slightly to 1.63 following consecutive four-goal outings.

With four games over the next week before the NHL Global Series against the Pittsburgh Penguins in Sweden on Nov. 14 and 16, the Predators know part of the battle is mental.

“The schedule’s grueling. There’s no time to look back,” Haula said. “There’s ebbs and flows in a game, and you just have to keep going. The belief in the group is vital. When we let that slip, I think it shows on the ice. We had good energy on the bench (against Vancouver). Guys stayed up, and we were able to come back like we talked about. That’s a good sign.”

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