The Nashville Predators are in Dallas for a Saturday matinee tomorrow after a 4-1 win over the Colorado Avalanche on Wednesday. The Predators stand at 12-3-0, solidly in first position in the Central Division and Western Conference, an unblemished road record and a goal differential of +20 over their first 15 games. Their goaltending duo is surrendering only 2.07 goals per game. For all intents and purposes, a wonderful start to the season. But, really…
Is it?
Record-wise, absolutely… but when you look a little deeper, there are things to work on. Look… I am not looking a gift horse in the mouth, this team is finding ways to win despite some distressing underlying stats. What are those underlying stats? Let’s take a look…
Special teams – This is the elephant in the room. The power play has a 13% conversion rate and is ranked 30th in the league… 30th… only the 8-6-1 Columbus Blue Jackets have a lower conversion rate. The penalty kill ain’t much better… a 77.5% kill rate good for 21st in the league. Thank havens the team is taking less penalties than last season.
Shot Attempts - Middle of the road here as well at 21st in the league… Even though the team is scoring at a decent clip, I’d still like to see more shots taken.
PDO - Often called the “luck” stat, the Predators are leading the league here. PDO is the sum of a team's shooting percentage and its save percentage. PDO is usually measured at even strength, and based on the theory that most teams will ultimately regress toward a sum of 1.00. 15 games in and the Predators are currently at a PDO of 1.048 … looking at the last five season, the team with the highest PDO never exceeded 1.022 … the Predators will regress in this stat and there may be hell to pay if they don’t improve on other aspects of their game.
So, it does appear that the hockey gods are smiling down on this Nashville Predators team, but we all know how fickle those deities can be. We see an unsustainable PDO, and special teams that are not so special. One can hope that as PDO regresses (as it should) and special teams improve (as they must) they should balance each other out… that is the very good news in this scenario for Pred Nation.
Puck drop for tomorrow’s game against the Stars is at 1pm… should be a good one in Big D.
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Random Notes
- Milwaukee Update – After dropping their matinee “School Day” game on Wednesday to Chicago, the Ad’s are back in action tonight at home against Rockford. They will be looking to snap a four game losing streak. Eeli Tolvanen was held off the scoresheet Wednesday, his season total is 1 goal and 7 assists for 8 points.
- NHL.com’s Most Underrated Player poll has Roman Josi named by two players out of 61 surveyed, only three players in the league were named more often in the survey of NHL players.
- There was a certain irony to getting two successful offside challenges at Pepsi Center Wednesday night….
- Rumors are flying around Canada’s capital that another Uber tape may be coming out… not a good look for Uber, or the Ottawa Senators.
- I see the coaching change really inspired the Blackhawks to… lose again. Yup… it’s a coaching issue.
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