Don’t look now, but the Nashville Predators have five straight wins under their belt. Sunday’s 3-2 win over the Winnipeg Jets helped the Preds get back to an even 10-10-0 record, a respectable place to be after enduring the franchise’s worst start to a season since 2003. The game also happened to move Nashville within a point of a playoff spot.
Wait, wait, wait… is this playoff talk with 62 games left in the season?
I know what you’re thinking… why are we talking about playoffs in November? Last night was the Preds’ 20th game of the season; we haven’t even gone a full quarter into the 2023-24 campaign. Talking about playoff position before most of us even have our Christmas tree put up seems as pointless as picking out the first dance song for yours and Anna Kendrick’s wedding.
Well, not exactly.
While we were chowing down on turkey and stuffing, we quietly passed a key milestone of the NHL season. The standings during American Thanksgiving have, weirdly enough, been a fairly accurate predictor of which teams will make the postseason five months later. As pointed out by Sportsnet’s Emily Sadler, since the 2005-06 season (minus the 2012-13 lockout and the two COVID-shortened seasons), 240 teams have found themselves in a playoff spot at Thanksgiving, and only 56 of them failed to make the postseason that year. That shakes out to the playoffs being roughly 77% set when the pumpkin pie is served.
Needless to say, the Nashville Predators were one of those teams on the outside looking in this past Thanksgiving Day, which is unfamiliar territory. Since the 2005-06 season, the Predators have only been out of a playoff spot on Turkey Day five times. They made the playoffs three of those times, in the 2011, 2012, and 2022 seasons, and missed in 2014 and 2023.
In the three years the Preds “rallied” post Thanksgiving, they didn’t have a huge gap to fill. The Preds were actually tied points-wise with the final playoff team in 2012 and 2022, and only two points behind in 2011.
This year, the Preds were five points behind the final wildcard team, the second-furthest they’ve been out of the final spot in this span. Only the 2013-14 Preds, who were six points out, had a bigger gap.
History may not exactly be on the Predators’ side, but it’s also not an impossible gap either. The 2008 Capitals, 2014 Stars, and 2019 Cup-winning Blues had bigger post-Thanksgiving climbs than this year’s Preds when they made the playoffs.
So could this year’s Nashville Predators buck the trend and make a playoff run?
Reasons For Optimism
The biggest reason for wanting to answer “yes” to that question is that the Nashville Predators have statistically been playing better hockey than their record would indicate. The Preds rank 8th in the NHL in xGF%, which indicates the team is getting more quality chances than their opponents during games. That stat is a good reflection of team quality; last season, 13 out of the top 15 teams in xGF% made the playoffs (the Preds ranked 24th last season.)
There are plenty of things the Preds are doing well that lead to sustainable success. The defense has done a complete 180 from last year, going from one of the league’s worst statistical defensive units to one of the better ones this year. Filip Forsberg has become a scoring machine akin to the Forsberg we were used to seeing a few years ago, and his free agent-pair of linemates – Ryan O’Reilly and Gustav Nyquist – have provided a much-needed source of depth scoring.
It’s also worth pointing out that the two biggest negatives for the team this season – goaltending and special teams – are two things that will likely be improved. Juuse Saros’s stats to start the year are well below his averages from the past few years. The smart money would be on that trend changing as the season progresses, and if/when it does, more wins should follow.
Likewise, the same can probably be said about the Preds’ penalty kill, which apart from Saros was maybe the one consistently positive thing last year’s Preds had going for them. The Preds’ PK unit ranks 29th in the league right now, but they’ve slowly shown improvement over the past few weeks. Given that last season’s PK units are nearly identical to this year’s, it’s not far-fetched to think that area will improve as well.
What Needs to Happen?
The question for the Preds moving forward isn’t necessarily who’s in front of them/behind them in the standings or how many points Teams X & Y have… it’s whether they can continue to rack up points at a pace necessary to reach the playoff threshold.
For instance, the Jets were the Western Conference’s last wildcard team last season, finishing with 95 points. So if that’s the line this year, the Preds would need 76 points in their final 62 games, or roughly four points in every three games. That’s not an impossible pace. Heck, last year’s hodge-podge of a roster finished with a points pace BETTER than that one. But it’s also a big ask to expect this still-rebuilding roster to do it again.
If the Preds want that to happen, it starts with goaltending and special teams improving, two things that slowly have been improving over the Preds’ recent hot stretch. But it also depends on all of the things that have been going right this year continuing to go right. Can Forsberg, Josi, and O’Reilly remain scoring juggernauts? Can the young players behind those three provide just enough scoring depth to support the offense? Can the Predators’ team defense remain sound?
These are all questions that will determine whether the Preds have a surprise playoff berth in store for them when the calendar hits April. For now, Preds fans can at least enjoy the recent glimpse of the high-end potential of this team.
