Nashville Predators: What Separates This Squad from 2014-15 Team?
The Nashville Predators continue to turn heads during this 2021-22 season, as their latest win against the Arizona Coyotes puts them at 48 points, which is good enough for first in the Central Division and sixth overall in the enitre NHL.
We thought we were going to get a “competitive rebuild,” as David Poile termed it, but this team looks well on their way to a playoff spot, and if you did not know about their offseason, you would think they had Stanley Cup aspirations.
The Predators have easily been one of the biggest surprises this year, and when you think of the team’s history, you might get flashbacks to the 2014-15 season. This was another year in which they heavily exceeded expectations, as they were one of the best regular season teams after trading franchise faces such as David Legwand and Patric Hornqvist.
Not to mention that this was the first year that head coach Peter Laviolette was behind the bench.
It turned out that their stroke of success was unsustainable, as they went into a serious slump in late February and never recovered. It very much feels as if that could happen this year, and it might, but there is one key reason to be more optimistic about this team’s success as the year goes on.
Nashville Predators faced no adversity during highs of 2014-15 season
The Predators came out firing on all cylinders to begin 2014-15, and for the longest time, never looked back. They were in first place in the league midway through the season, and by the time February 26 — which was the beginning of their heavy slump — rolled around, they had just THREE regulation losses on home ice all year. At that exact date, they had also suffered just one regulation loss in their past ten.
But once they started struggling, the losses started to pile up, and there was seemingly nothing they could do about it. Their ability to respond to adversity was nonexistent, and unsurprisingly, they bowed out in the first round of the playoffs to the Chicago Blackhawks. It was even more fitting that in that series, they blew a 3-0 first period lead to lose Game 1, and they also blew a 3-1 first period lead to lose Game 6.
Compare that squad to this year’s Predators, who have not only faced adversity, but overcome it. The current state of the team overshadows that in the first two weeks of the year, they looked downright awful.
They started 1-4-0 with losses to the Seattle Kraken and Winnipeg Jets, the former of which is one of the worst teams in the league, and the latter having undergone a coaching change in December. At that point, everyone had every reason to write the Predators off, as the narrative was that they were what we thought they were going to be, if not worse.
Even after turning things around, they — as most other also experienced — were forced to play a few games while decimated due to COVID-19, although their outbreak included the entirety of the coaching staff.
It was awfully inconvenient that this was happening during the middle of a winning streak, but it did not deter them, as they won both games without their coaches to extend the streak to seven.
For a team that just traded past members of their core and is relying on so much youth to fill their lineup, what they have accomplished is nothing to take lightly. They have gotten better and better as the season has gone on, and with a head coach in John Hynes, whose specialty is getting his players to thrive through adversity, they could get even better.
Is this to say that the Nashville Predators can keep up this level of play late in the year? We do not know, because experience is still important and growing pains still might be necessary for their long-term success. But here is what we do know — you can never count these guys out, no matter the circumstances.