Nashville Predators Enter Critical Four-Day Stretch Out of All-Star Break

It’s almost that time to get back to work for the Nashville Predators after the NHL All-Star break. They have a critical four-day stretch coming up.

Time is running out for the Nashville Predators to reverse course and get over that rut that they’ve been buried in since November began. They’ve had flashes of great hockey, but mostly inconsistency has plagued them.

It’s often a term thrown around way too loosely, but the Predators have to be in “playoff mode” right out of the gate when they take on the Toronto Maple Leafs tomorrow at home in Nashville.

This will be just the fourth home game of the month for the Predators, and they’ve lost two of those three. They did win their last game before the All-Star break in gritty fashion over the Buffalo Sabres to leave us a good taste in our mouth going into the eight-day break.

Time to put up or shut up

The players know what needs to be done. They know this team is way better than they’re record, or that they’re currently in last place in the Central Division. That makes it seem like they have an insurmountable hole to climb out of of, but truthfully they’re not that far out of it.

Players are already chiming in on the critical stretch of hockey they’re about to enter into, including what Nick Bonino told Brooks Bratten about the upcoming games:

I love this mindset that Bonino is taking to what’s ahead. These guys are professionals and veterans that know the ups and downs of an 82-game regular season. They understand they can’t treat this like a panic situation and instead realize to take control and deliver another playoff appearance.

The Predators do need to up their urgency, however. I’ve seen too many games in the first half of the season where they didn’t bring that level of urgency. Almost like they were resting on their talent and not willing to grind it out, which gets you beat quickly in the NHL.

It’s time for the stars of this team to step up and take charge. There’s no excuse for this roster to be wallowing away in last place. I’m looking at several proven guys that need to take control. Insert Filip Forsberg, Viktor Arvidsson, Ryan Johansen, Craig Smith and Matt Duchene into this equation.

I’m not going to mention Roman Josi because how can I call out the one player who has actually lived up to their stardom this season? Everyone else has either outperformed their preseason expectations or just aren’t producing enough.

Hopefully a new switch has been flipped throughout this locker room now that they’ve had time to push the reset put, recharge the batteries and get clicking under new head coach John Hynes.

What’s ahead in the coming week

These next three games are extremely crucial to getting off to a good start and reversing the mood. You have to remember that these guys aren’t robots, and they do feed off positive momentum despite every athlete always saying they take it “one game at a time”.

The Predators need to string together multiple wins in a row, and it starts tomorrow night against the Maple Leafs. We’ll have a full preview of this matchup leading up closer to the game tomorrow.

After the Toronto matchup at home, the Predators get the team at the very top of the NHL standing in the Washington Capitals. An incredibly difficult matchup defensively, but the Predators did already beat them once this season, even though that seems like an eternity ago.

This will be the first game of a road back-to-back as they’ll take on a completely different end of the spectrum with the New Jersey Devils. The obvious storyline for this one is Hynes is facing his former team that he was just fired from less than two months ago.

The Predators need at a very minimum two of these three wins, and preferably five of six points. Beating Washington is a tough sell, but I think the Predators have what it takes to beat both Toronto, and certainly New Jersey.

If they disastrously lose all three of these games, then it’ll be time to zero in on being sellers at the trade deadline. Make no mistake about it, these next four days and how the team prepares is going to be paramount to how the rest of the season unfolds.