Another key Central Division showdown tonight at Bridgestone Arena as the Nashville Predators welcome the Minnesota Wild to Music City for their first matchup of the season. As play begins today, the Preds find themselves six points behind the Wild with the team from St. Paul riding a five game win streak and a six game point streak, including two OT wins over Edmonton and solid wins in Toronto and home wins against St. Louis and Florida.
This is your typical Wild team, stingy on goals allowed as they have only given up 57, tied for the best mark in the NHL. Different as they are filling the net nicely as they are running a +23 on goal differential, with contributions coming from across all four lines. A lot of that is credited to Devan Dubnyk, who has posted a sparking .947 save percentage and a GAA of 1.60. The man is seeing beach balls right now and Nashville will have to generate a lot of traffic to crack him. During Minnesota’s five game win streak, Dubnyk has allowed seven goals on 146 shots.
The Predators, like Tuesday night, find themselves in another four point scenario with a team they are chasing in the division. You wonder if the momentum and energy from Tuesday’s come from behind win over St. Louis carries over.
It needs to.
Considering how tight the Central Division is, this team cannot allow any more points to slip away, at home or on the road. It would be very nice for the Predators to have home ice in the at least the first round of the playoffs and potentially avoid a West Coast opponent. Back-to-back west coast trips killed this team last season and it needs to be avoided if at all possible. Looking at SportsClubStats.com, it would appear that the Predators would need about 100 points to safely avoid that scenario, meaning that the team needs to capture 70% of remaining available points. Not an impossible task, but with every passing game, that mountain gets higher.
Game time is 7pm at Bridgestone Arena, limited tickets remain. Game coverage on 102.5 the Game with Pete Weber and Brent Peterson with pregame starting at 6pm. Fox Sports Tennessee’s pregame is at 6:30 with Willy Daunic and Stu Grimson.
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Random Notes
- Don’t forget to bring a new, unwrapped toy tonight as it’s the annual Toys for Tots Drive at Bridgestone Arena. Doors open at 5pm tonight.
- The goalie-go-round spins again as Marek Mazanec was assigned to Milwaukee to get a few starts and Juuse Saros was brought up to play the backup role. With a back-to-back coming up on Monday / Tuesday, I would expect the youngster to get a start in either New Jersey or Philly.
- The holiday roster freeze is in effect starting Monday, December 19th through Tuesday, December 27th.
- Recent waiver wire pickup Reid Boucher continues in Milwaukee for a conditioning assignment.
- You wonder how big an impact the return of Ryan Ellis and Colton Sissons had on the team Tuesday night… for about 30 minutes of game play, Nashville looked flat out scary… I suppose we will learn more as time goes on, but the initial results were excellent.
- Philly won its 10th straight last night, hanging on to beat Colorado 4-3, that ties for the 3rd longest win streak in franchise history.
- Eight games in the NHL tonight, all times CST – 6pm – ANA @ BOS, CHI @ NYI. 6:30pm – ARI @ TOR, LAK @ DET. 7pm – NJD @ STL, MIN @ NSH, FLA @ WPG. 7:30pm – NYR @ DAL.
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