Good special teams often can’t win you games by itself, but bad special teams can certainly lose you games.
The Nashville Predators found that out the hard way on Thursday night, falling 3-1 to the Toronto Maple Leafs, who tallied on two of their three power play opportunities. Meanwhile, Nashville went 0 for 5 with the man advantage.
In their first seven minutes and 24 seconds of power play time, the Predators mustered just one shot. After Filip Forsberg scored his 30th goal of the season to cut Toronto’s lead to one in the third period, Nashville got a monumental power play opportunity.
They managed five more shots on net, but could not put any past goaltender Frederik Andersen.
“For the first two periods on the power play, we didn’t do anything,” Forsberg said. “It was terrible, to be honest. We just had to do something to change it, and I think we were just working harder.”
For most of the night, the Predators seemed to dominate at even strength. They outshot the Maple Leafs 24-11 at even strength, compared with an even six to six in shots on the power play, even though Toronto had two less opportunities with the man advantage.
Here is how much Nashville dominated in the Corsi ratio, courtesy of Natural Stat Trick:
The Predators out-chanced the Maple Leafs for essentially the entire game at even strength, making those two Toronto power play goals that much more backbreaking.
Toronto has the NHL’s second-most effective power play, only behind the Buffalo Sabres. Rookie Mitch Marner had a point on the Maple Leafs’ first power play opportunity, and Calder Trophy favorite Auston Matthews tallied their second goal on a beautiful wrist shot that beat Pekka Rinne over the glove.
Head coach Peter Laviolette also noted a huge difference in the two teams’ power plays throughout most of the game: the ability to just shoot the puck.