James Carey Lauder-USA TODAY Sports
Over the years, the Nashville Predators have been arguably the biggest “meh” team in the NHL. To their credit, they’ve made the playoffs in each of the past eight seasons. On the other side of the spectrum, they’ve lost in the first round in five of those eight years – winning two games or fewer in that span – and they’ve made it out of the second round only once, pushing to the Stanley Cup final in 2016-17.
For every step forward the Preds have taken, there’s been a step sideways or a half-step back. They’re in the league’s mushy middle – the place where a team is too good to finish at the bottom of the standings (and thus, put themselves in the best position to select a generational player in the entry draft), and not good enough. to be a genuine Cup frontrunner.
This is the case again thus far this season: Nashville began the year 2-4-1 (including a five-game losing skid), then battled back to improve their record to 12-9-2. However, since then, they’ve stumbled into the four-game losing streak they’re currently mired in. And so, after 28 games, they’ve got a .500 points percentage (good enough only for sixth place in the Central Division, tying them with the roller-coaster St. Louis Blues). They’re a pedestrian 7-5-2 at home and a sub-pedestrian 5-7-2 road mark. By virtually every metric, the Predators are average at best.
This is not to argue that the Preds don’t have good players – they do. Defenseman Roman Josi is a perennial Norris Trophy candidate as the sport’s best blueliner, forwards Filip Forsberg and Matt Duchene are consistent contributors and, although his individual statistics have dropped somewhat this year, goalie Jusse Saros can be a difference-maker.
However, the Predators really haven’t had a legitimate superstar forward in their 22-year history. You can talk about former D-man Shea Weber and in-his-prime defenseman PK Subban as marquee Preds talents all you want, but the fact is, there has been no equivalent to Sidney Crosby or Alex Ovechkin in Nashville. Because they’ve pushed for a playoff spot every year under the direction of GM David Poile, the Predators have not been in the right spot to bring a top-five talent up front. That’s just a fact.
And now, with another year that looks like they’ll be in a fight just to make the playoffs, does anyone really believe this Preds team has the depth of talent to make a deep post-season push? We doubt it.
Once you get past their first line of Duchene-Forsberg-and-center-Mikael Granlund, there’s not a lot of elite talent to point to. The same goes on the back end: Josi and veteran Mattias Ekholm are keepers, as is currently-injured veteran Ryan McDonagh, but all three of them are 32 years old or older, and the remaining D-men are not skilled enough to eventually step up. in and replace them at the top of the defense unit.
For those reasons, you’d think change should be on the horizon for this Preds team, but under Poile, they’ve been loathe to undergo a full rebuild. That’s a shame, as it would be exciting for Tennessee hockey fans to eventually have a player like 2023 consensus No. 1 pick Connor Bedard to build a new generation around. Instead, they’ve got this constant retooling-on-the-fly going on, and it’s not working.
Is it going to take another season of the Predators going out in the first round in four or five games, or them not making the playoffs at all, for Nashville to wake up and try a route to winning they haven’t tried before? It sure feels that way. The mushy middle has been Nashville’s home for far too long, and they need a cold dose of reality to release them from their ongoing mediocrity.
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