The Nashville Predators are not in a good way right now.
They’ve lost six of their last eight games, including three straight, most recently losing to the Arizona Coyotes 7-5 on home ice Saturday night.
The Preds’ five game road trip, where they won only one game in five, was bad enough. Now they’ve started an extended home stand (nine of their next ten games are at Bridgestone Arena) with yet another loss.
But that’s not the worst part about Saturday night.
In the loss, the Predators had an excellent night offensively. They scored five goals for only the third time all season, and at one point they held a 4-2 lead. They were comfortably owning puck possession and all three phases of the game were holding off the Coyotes.
Then Arizona scored three straight in the 2nd period, and twice came from behind to beat the Preds 7-5.
Yuck.
Nashville makes history in the worst way
Now here’s the historical part.
The Nashville Predators had won 44 straight games when scoring at least five goals. The streak went back to October 31st, 2019, when they lost in overtime 6-5 to the Calgary Flames on home ice.
And if you look for five-goal output losses in regulation, that streak was 130 games. The last time that happened was February 18th, 2013 against the Avalanche (6-5 loss in Colorado).
All-time the Preds were 245-6-5-1 when scoring at least five goals; last night was just their 7th loss in regulation since the franchise began in 1998.
Walking out of Bridgestone Arena having watched the Predators lose is becoming more and more familiar. But watching them lose when the offense plays that well? That doesn’t happen often.
Andrew Brunette expresses frustration
After the game, Andrew Brunette said it came down to too many mistakes.
“I thought tonight was just mistakes,” Brunette said after the game. “It was a bad change. It was a face-off goal. It was two penalty killing goals. It’s hard to win in this league when you’re giving that many. Really like the effort, but we let them back in the game.”
Brunette expressed frustration about the repetitive nature of the mistakes he’s seen from his group.
“Things we need to learn from,” Brunette said. “But it’s been a little bit of a recurring theme. The redundancy game in and game out of saying the same things obviously isn’t working.”
The players themselves were frustrated in the locker room as well. Ryan O’Reilly said the team is “finding ways to lose games, right now” and Dante Fabbro said the team is struggling to put together a full 60 minutes.
While it’s encouraging to see the offense come to life, the Predators can ill afford to continue dropping games like this. Consistency in the team’s production at both ends just hasn’t been there through 14 games. It now finds them at the bottom of the Central Division one month into the season.
— Featured image via Danny Murphy/Icon Sportswire —
This article sponsored by Sallis Realty Group
