Ryan McDonagh: B+
This one really hurts considering the recent news of McDonagh heading to injured reserve after taking a puck to the face in the last game, a win over the New York Islanders, shown here from Alex Daugherty’s tweet of AtoZSports:
Ryan McDonagh just made a save with his face. Ouchhhhh. pic.twitter.com/LG7bOsiNWu
— Alex Daugherty (@AlexDaugherty1) December 3, 2022
Just a warrior mentality from McDonagh, and the Predators are no doubt going to miss his presence. Especially on special teams and the penalty kill.
McDonagh doesn’t do all of the flashy offensive stuff like Roman Josi does. But they were proving to be a highly effective defensive pair, giving up zero goals in over 126 minutes of ice time.
It took some time to identify this as a perfect defensive pairing, but once McDonagh returns to action the Predators clearly have something to go back to.
I’m giving this a B+, with the full expectation that as the season rolls on it can become an A+ if it pushes the Predators back into the postseason and gives us a shred of hope to actually win in the first round again.