The Pittsburgh Penguins take their 3-2-1 record on the road to one of the more underrated hockey markets in the NHL on Saturday night when they take on the Nashville Predators.

The Nashville Predators are off to an awesome start this year. They have the second most points (12) in the NHL right now, trailing only Anaheim's 14. With a win tonight they will sit on top of the hockey world.

How are they doing this? There are a few different reasons.

The first is getting a head coach in the modern NHL who values offense and allows his team to play a looser style. The Barry Trotz era in Nashville was always meh, even when they were winning it wasn't a great product to watch. I'm very excited for the fan base in Nashville to finally start to get a taste of what interesting hockey looks like . Peter Laviolette was a very good hire for that market in my opinion. Winning is the end goal for the players and coaches, but the NHL is an entertainment business for the fans and I'm not sure Nashville was given enough of that since their inception.

Pekka Rinne being back has certainly helped the Predators out big time. So far Rinne has an excellent .951% save percentage at even strength this year. The Predators team as a whole is at .953%. Part of the Penguins issues have stemmed from not being able to generate offense while at even strength. Rinne has the ability to neutralize them at even strength.

Pittsburgh's bottom six forwards haven't contributed much in the way of offense so far. To this point they have combined for six points at even strength. Blake Comeau has 4 even strength points, two of them came while playing with Malkin last game. Brandon Sutter has one goal, but that was with Malkin as well. Spaling has two points, Goc and Downie each have one. The top six has 17 combined even strength points so far.

The Predators decided to go "dumpster diving" for center depth this past offseason and they gave out three one year deals to Mike Ribeiro, Olli Jokinen, and Derek Roy for a combined 4.5M. These are the type of low risk signings that can make a GM look good. So far Ribeiro has 6 points while playing with young promising forward Filip Forsberg.

Forsberg has an awesome 4.12 point/60 at even strength so far this year. It isn't sustainable (for anybody outside of maybe Crosby) but it currently is good for 10th overall in the entire NHL. Pascal Dupuis has the current highest rate for a Penguins player at 3.43 points/60. That puts him at 24th overall in the league.

The third piece of that Ribeiro Forsberg line is none other than James Neal. Neal is coming off of a hat trick last game and it goes without saying, he will be motivated this evening. It is natural for a player to want to stick it to his former team, not sure you can blame a guy for that. What you can do is take advantage of that emotion. One of Neal's well known flaws during his time in Pittsburgh was his composure during big games. He can fly off the handle. My suggestion for Mike Johnston this evening would be to match Steve Downie up with Neal. Downie's biggest strength is his ability to annoy the opposition, from where I sit James Neal seems to be an easy mark.

Seth Jones and Olli Maatta are two of the best young defensemen in hockey. Should be fun to watch both of them on the same ice surface tonight.

Patric Hornqvist is only one shot behind the NHL leader Steven Stamkos. Hornqvist has 34 shots to Stamkos' 35, however Stamkos has played in two more games.

Patric Hornqvist and Nick Spaling return home for a one night cameo, I fully expect both players to receive a warm reception tonight.

I think tonight will be a very entertaining game, perfect for a Saturday night.

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Paul Stewart has a great article up on the website about Jaromir Jagr. I highly recommend it.

Thanks for reading!

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