After a day off yesterday, the Nashville Predators will practice at Centennial at 11am both today and Friday. Much needed time to finish the integration of the new acquisitions and fine tune a few things. With the schedule easing up a bit (at least from a number of games perspective) the team will get four practice sessions in the next week.
Here’s a few random thoughts and notes for the off day…
- Lots of tongues wagging in Pred Nation about Kevin Fiala and Filip Forsberg’s little dust up… get a better feel for it if you check out Forsberg’s hilarious Instagram post on it.
- The new rink in Bellevue now has a name – Ford Ice Center Bellevue was announced on Tuesday… in that announcement Ford extended it’s naming rights deal with the Antioch location as well.
- Tonight is the annual Nashville Predators Foundation Gala… Gansh Vegas Casino Night and Masquerade is the theme… if you can’t make it, you can still participate in the silent auction online.
- Attention is turning to the “who do we want?” phase of the playoff runup. At present the Preds would play the St. Louis Blues in the first round… a lot of folks are pointing to that March 23rd matchup in the ‘Peg as a critical game to see who wins the division and avoids St. Louis in an opening round series.
- Speaking of the Blues… what a comeback last night in Anaheim. Popping in two goals in the final 64 seconds to grab victory from the jaws of defeat… and give the Ducks another cut in this season of death by a thousand cuts in Anaheim.
- Teams are now falling into four categories for playoff contention… In, In the Hunt, In Dreamland and Out. In the West, teams like Edmonton and Vancouver are close to falling into the “In Dreamland” category, both being seven points out with 16 to play. In the East, Philly’s loss to Washington last night and knowing they have them two more times before the season ends… seven points in 15 games is just too much… welcome to Dreamland.
- Is there some concern in Calgary? They have lost three straight now after dropping a 2-1 decision to Vegas last night. They have opened the door for San Jose for the division and the conference title.
- The calendar has turned to March and the inevitable bitching about the playoff format has begun in earnest. Now a lot of it is coming from Toronto as they look to be heading to a first-round clash with Boston. I get tired of the whining about this… most of it from east coast media markets that don’t have the same travel issues as the west. It doesn’t de-value the regular season, the playoffs do what they always do… reward the team playing the best in April, May and June. Just play ‘em as they lay and let the best team win.
- The GM meetings have wrapped up and there are a few tweaks being recommended to the Board of Governors. A new rule that states that a player losing his helmet during a game must immediately leave the ice. Another new rule will allow the team starting a power play to choose what side of the ice to take the face-off.
- The other new thing coming out of these meetings, a time clock inserted into the end boards at each end of the rink, trying to bring a consistent clock location to every NHL rink.
- The Columbus Blue Jackets went all-in at the trade deadline and either they are holding pocket aces or hoping to catch the right card on the river, because they are sitting in 9th place in the Eastern Conference playoff race.
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The
Where We Stand section
Nashville holds the first spot in the Central Division leading the Winnipeg Jets by a single point, Winnipeg has three games in hand over Nashville. The Preds lead St. Louis (3 GIH) by seven points, Dallas by 10 points and Minnesota by 11 points.
Nashville currently holds the 2 seed in the Western Conference playoff race.
Impact Games Tonight – 6:30pm – MIN @ TBL. 7:30pm – COL @ DAL. 9:30pm – STL @ LAK.
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