Top-3 Concerns for Nashville Predators Heading into 2022-23 Season
Concern #1: Relying too heavily on Saros to carry the team
For as long as I can remember this team has lived and died by how incredible their goaltender could be to steal games from the jaws of defeat. It was Pekka Rinne for all of those years, but now it’s Juuse Saros’ turn.
It can’t be that way this season if the Nashville Predators are going to break out of irrelevancy. They have to become a more complete team so that Saros doesn’t have to be perfect every night.
Of course it’s a great luxury to have a world class goaltender like Saros in your net to bail you out, and that’s the main reason why analysts always give the Predators a puncher’s chance to make some noise every year.
We’re likely going to get the same tired result of barely scraping by into the postseason if all the weight falls onto Saros again to the tune of nearly 70 starts. He needs more support in front of him, and they hopefully did that with the acquisitions of Ryan McDonagh and Nino Niederreiter.
Although the Predators were in the top half of league in goals per game last season, I still think they can be even better this season. If they combine becoming a reliable offensive team along with Saros in net, they will be tough to beat for a lot of teams.
If they regress in this area, then Saros will once again be called upon to put this team on his back. The addition, which still puzzles me, of Kevin Lankinen is a minor upgrade to David Rittich so perhaps we’ll have more reliability when Saros does need a rest.
Concern #2: Players Coming Back down to Earth
It was truly something to behold last season watching so many players have career years including Roman Josi, Matt Duchene and Filip Forsberg. Not to mention Tanner Jeannot breaking out, Yakov Trenin finding his offense, Juuse Saros getting his first Vezina Trophy nomination, and Philip Tomasino showing at a young age he’s ready for the NHL.
Watching Duchene and Forsberg go back and forth for the single season goal record was phenomenal to see. Can we get an encore? Possibly, but I’m not banking on it.
Forsberg had his highest shooting percentage of his career at 18.4, while Duchene had his second-highest at 18.9. They might very well regress to the mean and not see as many goals break their way.
So much broke in the right direction for the Predators, and although you can say they made their own luck by playing well, you can also say there was some good fortune involved. Can we count on everything to break the team’s away again this season?
Despite the team seeing so many individually great performances, the Predators still barely scraped by into the playoffs and limped in only to get swept for the first time in franchise history.
Want your voice heard? Join the Predlines team!
This is my second concern going into the season because realistically we can’t count on all of these players to maintain this high level of production. Someone is going to likely regress from last season, and possibly more than one.
Are the Predators deep enough to make up for a drop off in production from Duchene? What if Forsberg returns back to pre-contract year Forsberg where he was just a 50 to 60-point scorer?
Someone else needs to step up this year to fill the likely drop off that we’re going to see from one of these players mentioned. Cody Glass is a good candidate, and Niederreiter joining the mix certainly helps neutralize any potential dip in production from somewhere else.
Let’s just be honest with ourselves here and realize that last season so many career years made for the team outperforming expectations. Now the bar is raised, and these players will be tasked with doing it all over again at a high level.
Concern #3: Nashville Predators don’t fix their penalty problem
This might be the key to the Nashville Predators getting over the hump in 2022-23 and battling for second place in what has become a top-heavy Central Division. A combination of decreasing the rash of penalties while also employing a stingy penalty kill unit.
I have some minor optimism that we’ll at least see some mild improvement in this area. It has to be a focal point for Head Coach John Hynes. He knows his team led the league in penalty minutes, penalties taken, and major penalties. And by a large margin.
The team got smarter and added veteran experience that should help in this area with Niederreiter and McDonagh. I don’t see these two taking momentum crushing penalties like we saw last season on far too many occasions.
Must Read. Four Storylines to Follow at Preds Training Camp. light
This also ties into my first concern regarding Saros and protecting him. How many times was a great game from Saros spoiled by the Predators tiring themselves out constantly killing penalties off?
The Predators will never realistically compete, especially in a seven game series, with the leagues best offensive teams if they come out with this same problem in 2022-23. Sure they can get by against lesser opponents, but not against the top tier teams.
I expect a smarter and more calculated Jeannot this season. I don’t want him to lose that edge, but he does have to be wiser in certain situations. Same goes for Trenin, Ekholm and Lauzon.
The penalty kill finished 18th last year, which was actually an improvement from the previous year. Still not good enough to offset being the most penalized team in the league. If you take that many penalties, you better have one of the NHL’s staunchest penalty kills to neutralize it.
If we can avoid these three concerns, then there’s no reason to think the Nashville Predators can’t finish top-three in division and win a playoff series or two. They have the roster on paper.