Nashville Predators: Three Factors in the Overtime Win over Oilers

Draisaitl Doesn’t Haunt the Nashville Predators This Time

Leon Draisaitl basically should just call himself the new owner of the Nashville Predators franchise. At least until last night. The Predators managed to keep one of the most dangerous players in the league off the scoresheet, a monumental task to be quite frank.

Draisaitl, as usual, was all over the ice skating in the dangerous areas just lurking. Waiting to punch one past Juuse Saros. He had four shots on goal, and there were moments when he just shook his head in disappointment after a great save or broken up pass.

Coming into Monday’s game, Draisaitl had an astounding 35 career points in 22 games against the Nashville Predators, including five game-winning goals and 12 power play goals. Just insane individual domination over another franchise.

On this occasion, the Predators came to play on the defensive end. Despite surrendering the three goals, they played stout at 5v5 even strength. They protected their goaltender and kept Draisaitl to the outside mostly. They also got their sticks into passing lanes and had some pretty effective zone exits, unlike previous games in the losing streak.

Per Emma Lingan of the team’s official website, Head Coach John Hynes gives a bunch of the credit to keeping Draisaitl and his top line in check to the trio of Cody Glass, Nino Niederreiter and Mikael Granlund:

Draisaitl will probably haunt us again in the future, but it won’t happen during the regular season at least. The season series is over with the Oilers taking two of three by a score margin of 16-11.

Saros Does Saros Things, Gives Fans a Reason to Chant “JUUIIIICCEEE”

You might as well just copy and paste this into every win for the Nashville Predators. If Saros doesn’t show up, usually this team has no chance. Even when he does put together epic performances, his team routinely has come up short and not provided goal support.

Finally, Saros got some help on the scoreboard as the Predators struck first thanks to aggressive play with the puck from Tommy Novak, and

Mattias Ekholm

cleaning it up for a rebound goal:

I understand that Saros surrendered three goals against this stacked Oilers team that 5th in the NHL in goals per game at 3.58. He held them under their season average while making 30 saves.

Saros also came up just shy of saving an extra goal according to MoneyPuck, with a 0.91 Goals Saved Above Expected.

We knew the Oilers were going to bring the heat in the third period, and that why they did. McDavid comes flying into the neutral zone like a slingshot, and Saros had to use his elite movement in the crease and flexibility to be locked in.

The Oilers are a matchup nightmare for a low-scoring team like the Predators, but on this occasion, Saros was good enough to keep the Oilers below four goals and give his team a realistic chance to win.

Unfortunately, this is how high of a level Saros will have to continue to play at for the Predators to climb back into a playoff spot. In fact, he might have to kick it up even another gear unless more goal support is on its way.

Preds Dictated the Pace at 5-on-5

This has been a reoccurring theme for a while now for the Nashville Predators. Stay out of the box against elite power plays, like the Oilers have, and keep it at 5-on-5. This allows them to better play their hard-hitting and physical style of play. Aggressive forechecking is paramount for the Predators’ success.

Shockingly, the Jeremy Lauzon–Dante Fabbro pairing was the most effective pairing at defending against the Oilers potent attack at 5-on-5. They held the Oilers to a 0.039 Expected Goals Against, and only surrendered two shots on goal while on the ice together.

Offensively at 5-on-5, the Predators also had the higher Expected Goals Percentage. Fabbro again, shockingly, led the team and all skaters in Expected Goals Percentage at 80.73%, followed by Yakov Trenin at 79.18% and Matt Duchene at 77.82%.

The closest Oilers player at 5-on-5 was Tyson Barrie at 64.36%. So at 5-on-5, the Predators were clearly the better team. Unfortunately, all three Oilers power plays resulted in goals despite one of the power plays technically expiring just before the Oilers scored.

This has to be the blueprint moving forward for the Nashville Predators. They are a much different team and difficult to play against when special teams aren’t involved. Obviously, the Predators power play still has a long way to go, but at 5-on-5 there’s hope that the Predators can hang with almost anyone.

Other Game Notes:

• Novak returned the Predators lineup for the first time since December 17, 2021 when he scored a goal against the Chicago Blackhawks. He wasted little time making his presence known with a primary assist on the Predators first goal of the game.
• Gross got his third goal of the season on a shot through traffic. The Predators pride themselves on feeding pucks through traffic and creating chaos in front of the goaltender.
• Duchene ended the Predators’ power play slump with his patented gorgeous stick handling and beating Jack Campbell up high. It was his 8th goal of the season, and 3rd power play goal of the season.
• Three of the four Predators’ goals came from defensemen (Ekholm, Gross, Carrier)