Nashville Predators: Players Who Need to Elevate After Two Early Losses

1. Matt Duchene

Anytime you’re talking about a player on the Nashville Predators who needs to step up, Matt Duchene is always the one who seems to come up first. This is obviously justified as Duchene hasn’t lived up to his $8M per year contract as the highest-paid player on the team along with Ryan Johansen.

I’ve defended Duchene for a long time as getting a lot of unfair criticism, and also tried to point to the fact that he does a lot of other things very well that doesn’t always show up as goals and assists. But the well is running dry on that front for me.

Duchene has opened the season with zero points through two games, and once again appears snake bitten. He’s got seven shots on goal and is putting in just under 20 minutes of ice time per game. So he’s out there for plenty of playing time, but still can’t make an impact offensively on the top line.

This can’t continue for a long stretch to open the season or Head Coach John Hynes will be forced to rethink his decision of putting Duchene on the top line with Forsberg and Johansen. A line combination that I agreed with going in, and still not ready to give up on it. But time is running out.