The Nashville Predators had an up & down month of November, yet remain on top of the Western Conference. We take a look back & present awards to the best & worst.
November was quite the roller coaster ride for the Nashville Predators. The Predators won the first four games of the month. They lost three games out West, then returned home & swept a three-game home stand. They went back & forth between wins & losses to end the month, and remained on top of the Central Division & Western Conference.
Not by much though. Some of Nashville’s division rivals spent the month catching up. The Colorado Avalanche went on a hot streak to end the month. The Winnipeg Jets played much better hockey in November & the Minnesota Wild are hanging around as well. If the Predators keep having issues, these teams will be more than happy to take the top spot.
Nashville still sits on top after a crazy month. Here’s some of the best, worst & interesting.
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New Top Predators Rival: The Injury Bug
Injuries are a way of life in sports, especially in physical sports like hockey. Your favorite team is rarely going to have its optimal roster all 100% healthy & ready to go. The best you can hope for is that most of the important players stay on the ice for most of the season.
The Nashville Predators had that happen last season. Outside of brief absences from Filip Forsberg & Roman Josi, most of the top Nashville players were available to play the lions’ share of the 2017-18 season. It was one of the main reasons the Predators were able to win the Presidents’ Trophy. If they attain the best regular season record again this year, it won’t be due to everybody staying healthy.
Just after Pekka Rinne came back from concussion symptoms, Nashville lost the services of Viktor Arvidsson. He missed three games with a lower-body injury, came back & immediately injured his thumb. He was expected to miss 6-8 weeks. P.K. Subban went out three days after Arvidsson with an upper-body injury and has missed two weeks of action. Kyle Turris followed them onto IR with an upper-body injury last Friday, and there’s no word on when he’ll be back.
The bright side of all of this is it’s allowing Peter Laviolette to shuffle the lineup and give different guys chances to work together on lines. We can also pray to the hockey gods that this rash of injuries now won’t be repeated later in the season.