Nashville Predators: New Rules Mean New Opportunities

On Ice Results

The Nashville Predators have played two preseason games so far under these “new rules.” In those two games, they amassed 31 penalty minutes throughout 13 penalty kills. They allowed 4 goals for an abysmal 69% penalty kill. Thankfully, it is only the preseason. And we can expect a much better performance as the preseason and year go on. However, the refs showed they were going to call things tighter. Especially for slashing.

It is easy to see a trending growing if we look at the rest of the league. Mark Spector of Sportsnet broke down the penalties from all of the preseason games played this past Monday. In all, there were 46 slashing or face-off infraction penalties called. That was from just six games! Of those 46 penalties, 37 of them were for slashing. That is an alarming average of over six slashing calls per game. Six. I can’t remember ever seeing a single game with six slashing calls. And here, every game averaged six. But what does it all mean?