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Game Night - Looking for Mr. Consistency

February 21, 2019, 8:11 AM ET [4 Comments]
Paul McCann
Nashville Predators Blogger •Predators Radio Network • RSSArchiveCONTACT
The Nashville Predators open a three game home stand tonight at Bridgestone Arena as the Los Angeles Kings come to town for their only visit of the season. The Kings have been a disappointment to say the least, especially after adding Ilya Kovalchuk in the offseason. They are at the bottom of the conference and seem to be floating their way through the rest of the season with quite a few names on the Kings roster being bandied about for movement before Monday’s trade deadline.

So… Pred Nation is asking; Which Predators team shows up tonight? The resilient group that came back against Dallas? Or the disinterested group that showed up (barely) in Las Vegas?

The Predators home ice advantage is slowly coming back as the team is 3-2-1 at home since the beginning of February, but the win-one-lose-one cycle needs to be broken. Winnipeg is faltering a bit, squandering one of their games in hand last night and St. Louis is coming up fast in the rear view mirror. No time like the present as my mom used to say.

Tonight drops the flag on the last 20, a time for the Predators to get their game together for the second season. The Kings have been in Nashville for a couple of days after their loss to Washington on Monday night. They are a sub-.500 road team and are winless in their last five. A perfect opportunity to get past the “play down to the opponent” label.

The first goal will be the key tonight, LA is 16-4-1 when scoring first and 9-0-0 when leading after one. Nashville shows the same phenomenon… 26-3-1 when the Preds score first and 15-1-1 when leading after one.

In net, Pekka Rinne had a bit of an off night on Tuesday against the Stars, if he is net, expect a big rebound there as Rinne is rarely off on back-to-back starts… although I would not be surprised to see Juuse Saros get the nod, we will see what happens at morning skate. For the Kings, Jonathan Quick has not had a great season… a sub-.900 save percentage is almost unheard of for Quick, but he sits at .899 coming into tonight.

The Kings are led in scoring by Anze Kopitar with 17 goals, Kovalchuk and Alex Iafalo have 13 each, Dustin Brown and Tyler Taffoli have 12 each. For Nashville, the JoFA line will be the stop target for LA, if the rest of the team can pick up the scoring, like happened on Tuesday, a major concern will begin to be alleviated. Consistency is the watchword for this team.

Game time is 7pm, pregame starts on 102.5 the Game at 6pm, NBCSN is in for tonight’s game so puck drop will be pushed to 7:10pm. As usual, limited tickets remain…

See you at the Bridge!

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ICYMI – Last night’s SlapShot Radio with Eklund and Milwaukee head coach Karl Taylor.


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The Where We Stand section

Nashville maintains the second slot in the Central Division, one point behind the Winnipeg Jets, Winnipeg holds two games in hand over Nashville. The Preds lead St. Louis by six points, Dallas by 12, Colorado and Chicago trail by 14.

Nashville currently holds the 4 seed in the Western Conference playoff race and has a 99.9% chance of making the playoffs according to SportsClubStats.com… the “85% chance” line in the Western Conference is down to 88 points right now.

Impact Game Tonight – 7:30pm, STL @ DAL.

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Random Notes

- Milwaukee Update – The Admirals travel to Cleveland for their next game, a Friday night tilt with the Monsters. Head coach Karl Taylor was on SlapShot Radio last night with some great insight on the Baby Preds. Check out the podcast on SoundCloud, link/player above.

- Milestone Watch – PK Subban is 2 points from 400 and 6 goals from 100. Kevin Fiala is 3 points from 100.

- Fil-bruary – Filip Forsberg’s goal on Tuesday was his 21st of the season. Forsberg is the first player in franchise history to post 20 goals in five seasons.

- Trade Deadline – The Matt Duchene rumor will not go away, but neither has the Mats Zucarrello rumor. Expect things to really heat up over the next few days. When one domino falls… the rest will fall fast and furious.

- The War for the Wild Card – Have you looked at the Wild Card race lately? There are seven teams within six points of each other.

- The Blues are Streaking – 11 game winning streak on the line in Dallas tonight. I will definitely be scoreboard watching tonight.

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