Nashville Predators are among the worst of the worst in franchise history

You'll have a hard time finding a darker stretch of hockey in Nashville Predators history than where they find themselves at right now at a 7-12-5 record and barely out of last place in the Western Conference.

It would be one thing if this team surrendered to a true rebuild and was just living with the growing pains of playing an inexperienced roster. However, it's quite the opposite. On paper, this team is loaded with talent that should be competing for a top spot in the division.

The optimism of "there's still plenty of games left to turn it around" has now passed. We're past the quarter mark of the regular season with Game 25 for the Predators coming up on Saturday against the 15-4-4 Minnesota Wild. A team playing much better than their preseason expectations.

It's almost like the Predators and Wild swapped places from their preseason expectations. Many more fans and analysts alike would've predicted the Predators to be the 15-4-4 team and the Wild to be the 7-12-5 team.

Let's take a look back at the worst teams in Nashville Predators history after the quarter mark of the regular season, and where this current Andrew Brunette squad compares. The early part of Predators history still includes ties and overtime losses as points, so we'll just go off of total points in the standings.

The expansion season: 1998-1999 (9-14-1, 19 PTS)

Let's start with where it all began and the expansion 1998-99 season for the Nashville Predators. Of course during that season the expectations couldn't get any lower. As a fan you were just excited to have professional hockey now in your backyard.

The 1998-99 Predators and this current season Predators stacked with superstar talent has the same amount of points in the standings through 24 games. Barry Trotz was the head coach of the 1998-99 team and quickly gained the reputations of always getting the most out of his roster full of blue collar guys and not much in the way of superstar level talent.

The same cannot be said of what Brunette is getting out of a roster right now with the likes of Steven Stamkos, Roman Josi, Filip Forsberg, Ryan O'Reilly and Juuse Saros. Among others who on paper should be playing so much better than what they're producing.

The 1998-99 squad was never able to build a long winning streak and eventually finished with just 63 points in the standings. Their longest win streak of that season was three games.

This year's current Predators team also has failed to build a winning streak longer than three games so far. The leading scorer of the 1998-99 team was Cliff Ronning with 53 points, and the leading goal scorer was Sergei Krivokrasov with 25 goals.

A 63-point finish for an expansion team is something you can forgive, but if the 2024-25 Predators come anywhere close to that finish then it will go down as one of the biggest underperformances from a team in NHL history, much less franchise history.

1999-2000 Nashville Predators (7-14-1, 15 PTS)

The second year for the Predators as an NHL team was struggling to climb their way up the NHL hierarchy, as you would expect. Once they reached the 24-game mark, the 1999-2000 Predators were on a seven-game losing streak. They would follow that up later in the season with a six-game losing streak and another five-game losing streak.

Despite a few long losing streaks, the 1999-2000 Predators would finish a tad bit higher in points than the first-year team. They'd claw their way to 70 points thanks to seven ties and seven overtime losses, accounting for 14 extra points.

The leading point scorer of that 1999-2000 team was once again Cliff Ronning, finishing with 62 points. He would also lead the team in goals with 26, while the duo in net of Mike Dunham and Tomas Vokoun would put up respectable save percentages at over .900 and GAAs below three goals against per game.

So it wasn't the goaltending necessarily that plagued the 1999-2000 squad. It was lack of goal scoring, which the team finished 25th out of 28 teams in goals for. Sounds kind of familiar to this 2024-25 team, only this current team has way more offensive weapons to work with than the 1999-2000 team.

2002-03 Nashville Predators (4-12-4-4, 16 PTS)

Well, there is one team in franchise history that got off to a worse start after the quarter mark than this year's Nashville Predators and that's the 2002-03 team that also couldn't score goals, but did have quality goaltending.

The 2002-03 team won just four of it's first 24 games that season. The 2024-25 Predators have won just seven, so not much better and again with way more talent and way fewer excuses.

After the horrendous opening to the season, the 2002-03 team would rally to start winning more games. They would even hit a stretch of winning nine of 11 games in February.

I can see something similar happening with this year's Nashville Predators. With the playoff hopes bleak at best, it wouldn't' surprise me at all if they rally for a bunch of wins in January and February, but it will probably be too late to make difference for their playoff desires.

In 2002-03 the Predators would finish with 74 points with 20 of their points either coming from ties or overtime losses. They only had one goal scorer hit 20 goals, and it was Andreas Johansson with 20.

And similar to Juuse Saros' stellar play in net getting spoiled in 2024-25, so did Tomas Vokoun in 2002-03. Vokoun put up a .918 save percentage and a 2.21 GAA.

2020-2021 Nashville Predators (10-14-0, 20 PTS)

After returning from the pandemic, the 2020-21 NHL season got delayed until mid-January and was only a 56-game regular season. No one really knew what to expect from teams that had been off for so long and coming out of a worldwide pandemic.

Led by John Hynes as head coach, the Nashville Predators stumbled to get their legs under them in a quirky scheduling format that had you play two-game sets against the same opponent. The divisions were realigned, and the Predators would suffer two-game sweeps to the Dallas Stars, Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers over the first 24 games.

The Lightning would actually take four games from the Predators in the first 24, leaving the Predators with an overall record of 10-14-0 for 20 points. One point better than the 2024-25 Predators right now.

As the season went along, the 2020-21 Predators would start sweeping some two-game sets of their own against lesser opponents like the Chicago Blackhawks and Columbus Blue Jackets. They would rally to qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs and lose in six games to the heavy favorite Carolina Hurricanes.

Recap

So basically this 2024-25 Nashville Predators team featuring future Hall of Famer Steven Stamkos, franchise leading scorer Roman Josi, among other high end talents like Filip Forsberg, Ryan O'Reilly and Jonathan Marchessault can only be compared all the way back to the early expansion level teams in terms of worst starts to a season.

Fans of the Nashville Predators for many years have become spoiled to expect regular season success, and the failures are usually tied to not executing in the playoffs. We are in very unfamiliar territory to be struggling so badly in the regular season that the team is flirting with last place in the entire NHL.

This is why the calls are so loud for Brunette to be fired. A guy only in his second year as head coach and coming off a second-place finish for the Jack Adams Award the previous season.

Now the question is will this year's team get hot in the second half and at least make things interesting in the last couple of months. Maybe they surge for 80 to 90 points and save Brunette's job for another season. Many think he should've already been fired and shouldn't even get the chance to rectify this horrendous start past the quarter mark.

I leave you with this; a list of the top-5 lowest point percentages in Nashville Predators history and where the 2024-25 currently sits on this list.