Nashville Predators: Ranking Each Central Team’s Projected Top Forward Line

One of the Nashville Predators‘ problems over the years has been that their top forward talent has not come close to comparing to those on contending teams. As far from contending as they were last year, a really good top line was not an issue.

Last year’s line of Filip Forsberg, Mikael Granlund, and Matt Duchene were one of the best that the Predators have had in their existence, as they were consistent from game to game.

Ryan Johansen would be the center from time to time, but even when he was, they were still a very effective group. The Predators finally had a for

The Predators brought back all of those guys plus adding Nino Niederreiter, and Philip Tomasino is very likely to enter the top six and further take some pressure off of the big guns. They do not expect their top line production to be an issue this year either.

Central Division has some really good top lines

The Central division has five teams that really have a shot to at least make the playoffs this year, and three teams that really do not. But when you look at the division, the vast majority of them have top lines that you can look at and say they are at least serviceable.

Top lines are not a weakness of this division, and it will be very tough for the Predators to have the absolute best one in the division. That being said, it is just as tough to say that there is a huge gap between the teams’ top lines, so the Predators will be far from out of their league.

And to their delight, there is at least one team with a top line that just about all of us can agree is the worst.

All line combinations are courtesy of Daily Faceoff.