{"id":527069,"date":"2026-03-28T05:34:31","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T05:34:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/527069\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T05:34:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T05:34:31","slug":"from-the-nhl-basement-on-dec-8-to-a-wild-card-spot-the-predators-long-climb-back-national-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/527069\/","title":{"rendered":"From the NHL basement on Dec. 8 to a wild-card spot: The Predators\u2019 long climb back | National Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) \u2014 The Nashville Predators<\/a> never doubted they could be a playoff team. Proving it took far longer than expected.<\/p>\n

A franchise that ranked dead last in the NHL standings as late as Dec. 8 goes into the final 10 games of the regular season sitting in the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference. Even better, Nashville is just three points back of Utah for the first wild-card berth with a game in hand.<\/p>\n

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\n <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) \u2014 The Nashville Predators never doubted they could be a playoff team. Proving it took…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5119],"tags":[5,2409,231,5281,4,292,2410,60808,43,104],"class_list":{"0":"post-527069","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nashville-predators","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-nashville","10":"tag-nashville-predators","11":"tag-nashvillepredators","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-nhl-hockey","14":"tag-predators","15":"tag-predators-stamkos-forsberg-wood-brunette","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-stanley-cup-playoffs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116305177026565318","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}